North Mianus: Friends head to regional bee

Written by Greenwich Post Staff
Tuesday, 21 February 2012 12:00

Two North Mianus School fourth grade friends will together be representing their school at the Scripps Regional Spelling Bee in Danbury on the evening of March 21.

Andrew Alford came in first place in the school-wide bee and his friend, Alasdair Fletcher came in second in the school spelling bee on Thursday, Jan. 26.

The boys are friends, and in the qualifying written test the Tuesday before, the results were flipped, with Alasdair taking first place and Andrew taking second place. Christina Klepper is the fourth grade teacher running the program at NMS.

This is Andrew’s third NMS spelling bee win, as he participated the two years that Spelling Superstars was offered at NMS.

Spelling bees are a new experience for Alasdair, moving here with his family from the U.K. during second grade. Not only had he not heard of, or participated in a spelling bee before, but he had the extra challenge of distinguishing his spelling between his proper British English, and the slightly different American English spelling and pronunciation of some words.

Parents are trying to keep the boys on track and in check — keep them focused and united as “Team NMS” through which they can study together and not get so competitive about it with each other.

The families are planning mock family spelling bees together over pizza as they strive to learn their new set of over 1,000 words to prepare for Scripps Regionals.Should they win at regionals, they may have the opportunity to compete in the Scripts National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

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