Melissa Barnes
Frances Belt
Benjamin Merlini
Eloise Muir
Kike Ogundipe
Ella Vuetilovoni
Six Junior MAGS students have made it into the top 200 of the national Spelling Bee competition.
The Year 9 and 10 students pictured above now head to the Auckland regional semi-final on 12 September. The top 36 competitors nationally will compete for the New Zealand title in Wellington in October.
For the first round, the students had to learn 200 words from an official list and were tested on 100 of them, plus 50 they had not previously been shown, including Maori words.
For the semi-final they must learn another 100 words for written and oral testing.
MAGS’ Head of English Ms Aubrey Mason said the students attended lunchtime tutorials, including lessons on Maori spellings and pronunciation. “They’ll be spending the July holidays reading the dictionary, and lots of books.”