Bulgarian National English Spelling Bee

The competition continued with the national finals for Spelling Bee and Spelling Bee Junior.

The Spelling Bee national final happened on April 16^th at the big hall of the American colleagues in Sofia. All 24 national finalists and their teachers arrived the previous day and at the dinner the students got their competition numbers and were acquainted with the rules and logistics for the final.

It started with greetings from the main partners – representatives of America for Bulgaria Foundation, The US Embassy in Sofia and the Sofia Regional Education Inspectorate. The acapella choir of the American college presented a few songs and contributed to the high spirits among the competitors and the audience.

The competition was very emotional and all the participants demonstrated good knowledge of English and the ability to stay concentrated for long hours. After more than 20 rounds of serious “spelling battle” the 7^th grader Teodor from Markovo won the competition and became the 12^th National Spelling Bee champion. All participants and teachers received certificates, trophies and gifts. But the best award for all of them was the opportunity to participate in a week-long Spelling Bee summer camp in July.

The national final for Spelling Bee Junior was held on May 14^th and gave the opportunity to the 22 national finalists to demonstrate what they have learned during the preparation period and after the first 2 rounds of the competition.  The 4^th grader Iva from Botevgrad proved that she deserves the victory and won the competition. She spelled correctly the word psychology. All the participants and their teachers were rewarded for their efforts and received certificates, trophies and gifts.

The summer camp for the Spelling Bee national finalists and their teachers was held from July 3rd till July 9th at Godlevo village, near Razlog. The program was very intensive and diverse and it aimed to satisfied the needs and the interests of all the participants. 5 Spelling Bee alumni served as camp counselors and demonstrated dedication to the Spelling Bee cause, as well as great organizational and presentation skills.  They often say:  "Once a bee, always a bee".

The 4^th of July was celebrated with a trivia game about US followed by traditional American outdoor games. Around the camp fire the participants had the pleasure to make and try s'mores and sang American songs.

The agenda included also sessions on Internet culture and literacy, emotional intelligence, negotiation and cooperation, being grateful, as well as a lot of games, sports, hikes, etc. The teachers had the chance to share best practices with their colleagues and built a professional network for sharing resources and ideas.  

The camp was instrumental for building long term friendships among the students, professional network among the teachers and added a lot of new members of the big Spelling Bee family.

After the long preparation period the Spelling Bee competition entered its active phase at the last weeks of February.

The school competitions were held from February18 to March 2, 2022.  Several schools organized 2 school competitions due to the big number of registered participants. 220 school competitions took place during that week for the SB and 155 for SBJunior. The school competitions were organized “in person” and only 5 of them were online due to local quarantine requirements.

CORPluS staff visited schools in Sofia and the area which participate for the first time and provided support and guidance.  All participants in the school competitions and the teacher-coordinators received certificates and small awards in appreciation of their efforts and hard work. 50 schools took part in the photo contest and sent pictures from the school competitions in 3 categories – “BEEs are better together”, “BEEcause we love yellow”, “We are a BEE school”.  The results of the competition will be announced in April.

As every year, we offered all registered schools an opportunity to take part in an additional campaign under the slogan “Search BEEyound the obvious”.  It is focused on the media literacy of the students and our efforts were focused on development of the critical thinking of the students, searching for information and analyzing it, team work, solving problems, creation of positive and high-quality digital content and safe online communication. The campaign is organized in partnership with Media Literacy Coalition. 2 trainings were organized for the interested teachers and 28 took part in them. They had the opportunity to work on the development of their own lesson plans on media literacy topics and also had the chance to create a network and exchange the materials they created.

The first two students from each SB school qualified for the regional competitions and studied 200 additional words. The school champions from SBJ schools also qualified for the regional competitions and had to study 100 additional words.

On March 26th and 27th eight regional competitions took place in 7 cities around the country – Sofia (2), Plovdiv, Blagoevgrad, Sliven, Varna, Razgrad and Lovech. CORPluS Foundation identified and trained volunteers to help with organizing the regional events. All the announcers were native speakers (Fulbright ETAs) with a teaching experience in the country and they contributed a lot to the success of the competitions. Former Spelling Bee finalists were also involved as judges and helped with organizing the competitions. They served as role models and many 7^th graders already asked how they could get involved as volunteers in Spelling Bee events. This practice is very well appreciated and demonstrated that the Spelling Bee alumni still belong to the big Spelling Bee family. All participants at the regional competitions and their teachers were awarded with certificates and prizes for their achievements.  The 3 best spellers from each regional competition qualify for the national final which will happen on April 16th in Sofia. The best 24 spellers received additional100 words to study in order to prepare for the final.

For the first time the school champions from SBJunior participated in regional competitions. 7 Spelling Bee Junior regional competitions were organized online on March 28th and 29th. The young spellers demonstrated impressive English language knowledge and skills, as well as a lot of enthusiasm and ambition. The first 3 spellers from each regional competition qualify for the national final which will be on May 14th in Sofia. The finalists received a list of 50 additional words for the final.

The preparation for both finals is underway and the results will be reported in the next report.