Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee abuzz after NAPLAN results land
Teachers across Australia have flocked to register more than 40,000 students for the annual Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee as NAPLAN results highlight ongoing foundation literacy challenges.
This week’s NAPLAN results were a bag of licorice all sorts for Australian parents but the nation’s teachers wasted no time rallying the troops. For the second straight year, the release of NAPLAN results coincided with the Prime Minister’s Spelling busiest day of traffic since registrations and the school round opened. Just two weeks into the rego period, the Bee has sailed past 40,000 students nationwide.
With three weeks still remaining to register students across Years 3-8 to take part in Kids News’ free, fun and fast online spelling challenge, Grattan Institute education program deputy director Amy Haywood said the simple digital format for classrooms – with each student separately playing against the clock on their computer or tablet – “lowers the barrier to entry”.
“It’s great to have an activity that focuses on spelling that’s kind of ‘gamified’,” Ms Haywood said. “It’s individualised, you’re on your own computer, it’s not so embarrassing to get something wrong.
“It means that all students can take part and have a go and we do want all students to be practising their spelling.”
Writing in the Wentworth Courier on Wednesday, reigning Red level (Years 7-8) national champion Aditya Paul likened the Bee to a game of “bullet chess”.
“It is fast, relatively painless, and an easy way to boost your English skills,” Aditya said.
Boosting those basic skills across the board is what the Bee is all about.
Ms Haywood said Grattan’s advisory work with government, Catholic and independent schools confirmed that different states and territories are moving to “that structured literacy approach”, in particular explicit early childhood teaching in sound and word combinations and phonics.
“That approach – which we know is most effective for teaching early readers how to read – is something that’s been taken up across a number of states,” Ms Grattan said. “In Tasmania, they’ve got their Lifting Literacy reforms, which are in the works and have been prior this most recent election, but also South Australia, WA also has a strong early reading focus, NSW, Victoria and Queensland have also made similar commitments.
“There are several different Catholic diocese that have also committed to this approach, so that’s great to see across a system-wide level.”
A former classroom English teacher, Ms Haywood is strongly in favour of sequenced learning models across school years, and advocates Australia adopting England’s stunning success with “hub schools”, best practice community partnerships that share teachers’ expertise, elevating learning strategies and student outcomes across the board.
But it’s the UK government’s system-wide professional development for English teachers, the National Professional Qualification (NPQ) courses, that she sees as “the game-changer”.
“Spelling (is) such a gateway … because being able to read is so fundamental for every other subject they’ll do in school, for so many work environments, and particularly those growing jobs of the future as well,” Ms Haywood said.
“It is really important to get those foundationals right and then it opens all these doors to all these other subjects that we can focus on and students can really dive into, particularly as they go into secondary school.
“One of the NAPLAN testing areas is spelling. I think it makes sense that (teachers might) think potentially being part of the PM’s Spelling Bee could be a great addition to the curriculum that we’re already teaching, because it could be a fun and engaging way for students to show their stuff.”
In a July 30 press release, Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said NAPLAN results were “encouraging, but there is more work to do”.
He confirmed the Albanese Government has now signed agreements with all states and territories to fix the funding of public schools in the biggest ever investment in public schools by the Australian government, worth $16 billion over the next 10 years.
Registrations and the school round of the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee close at 5pm AEST on Friday 22 August. Visit spelling-bee.com.au, kidsnews.com.au
ABOUT THE BEE
● The Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee is a free, online competition for students in Years 3-8.
● Students compete at their school in three levels: Green level for Years 3-4, Orange level for Years 5-6 and Red level for Years 7-8.
● They get 30 randomly selected words from their competition level and have 25 seconds to type each answer. The students with the most correct words in the fastest time progress to finals.
● Teachers can register their students until August 22, when the school round ends.
● State and territory finals will be held September 1-5 and the national finals on September 10-11.
● The national champion in each age group wins a trip to Canberra to meet the Prime Minister, an iPad, HarperCollins book pack and a $1000 voucher for their school.
Details: kidsnews.com.au, spelling-bee.com.au
Originally published as Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee abuzz after NAPLAN results land
