Buzz at the VLT Spelling Bee

On Wednesday 24th January, 2024, Ruislip High School was excited to host the Vanguard Learning Trust’s spelling bee for the second year in a row. We were also really pleased to welcome the staff and students from Oak Farm Junior School, for their first experience of the spelling bee. 

The room was filled with anticipatory buzz even before the competition began. Students across all six schools, alongside Ruislip High’s Year 7 cohort, filled the seats of the new auditorium - all in support of their peers.

Once the competition began, representatives from each school took turns spelling increasingly challenging words, one-by-one, earning points for each correctly spelt word. As the difficulty of each word increased, so did the pressure, but the students rose to the challenge. RHS and Field End were neck in neck, but Field End held their nerve to take the first round.

The second round was the speed challenge. Words in this round centred around the themes of exploration. Students had a choice of difficulty: easy, medium, or hard words to spell. There were some clear tactics employed by the teams with a number of them choosing the 1-point easy ones to answer as quickly as possible.

At this stage, it was still anyone’s game. The last round, though technically the individual challenge, was a final opportunity to earn a few additional points to change up the standings. However, with even more challenging words, the fight for the last speller standing was nail-biting. With just two students left standing, Mr Gould commented, “It’s just like a penalty shout-out!”. Japji from Vyners ended up taking the crown of Trust Best Speller, but her fantastic effort in the final round wasn’t enough to wrestle the overall lead from Field End, who deservedly claimed the team award.

Overall, it was a great opportunity to showcase the best of all six schools. Well done to all our top spellers across the trust, and congratulations to Field End’s stellar Year 6 team on their phenomenal teamwork; it was a well-deserved win.