Spelling bee champions prepare for W. Pa. finals

When William Smitley speaks, his voice is soft and even, his tone thoughtful and kind.

But when the sixth-grader and spelling bee champion of Ramsay Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant spells, his voice is confident and strong. He recites each letter forcefully, with intention and confidence, gaining momentum as he works through the word.

Sometimes, he said, he likes to close his eyes and visualize the word before he spells it out loud. And when he gets stuck, he'll ask for the country of origin.

“If they say country of origin and they say French, then I know how to spell it,” the 12-year-old said, casually rattling off a list of words of French origin he studied while practicing with his mother.

Knowing the country of origin of a word gives him clues about which letters could make which sounds, helping him to successfully spell a tricky word.

Smitley is one of more than 100 students from the region who will compete in the Western Pennsylvania Scripps Spelling Bee finals Saturday at Robert Morris University. The competitions start local, with schoolwide competitions held in classrooms and auditoriums, adjudicated by teachers.

The bulk of the preparation often happens at home, during late-night cram sessions with parents and siblings, away from bright stage lights and keen ears of judges and peers listening for an out-of-place letter. Winning a bee takes a bit more than just memorizing the dictionary, local champs said.

Callie Meyer, a sixth-grader and winner of Norwin's Hillcrest Intermediate School spelling bee, applies strategies she learned in orchestra to help her prepare.

“They both take a lot of practice,” the 12-year-old violinist said, adding that learning how to break down a piece of music into smaller parts and identify tricky sections helps her work through the long lists of words she studies.

Her father, Stephen Meyer, helps her practice. He's noticed a few patterns during their study sessions, such as his daughter's ability to decipher odd spellings or to know when a word has double letters.

“And her ability to analyze a word she's never seen, based on her experience with other words,” he said.

Linda Kucan, associate professor of instruction and learning at the University of Pittsburgh, said studying for a spelling bee focuses students' attention on morphemes, the building blocks of words. Morphemes include prefixes and suffixes, which are added to the beginning or end of a word to change its meaning.

“Students who know how to recognize and spell morphemes, or meaningful parts of words, have clues to a word's meaning,” Kucan said.

A quick example: The word “decomposition” includes the prefix “de-,” meaning a reversal, and the suffix “-tion,” which means the result of. Understanding what those building blocks mean could help a student read and understand a tricky word that they've never seen or heard before.

This helps students build writing fluency, said Carla Meyer, associate professor of adolescent literacy and English education at Duquesne University. That's the ability to sit down and write a letter, an essay or even a 140-character Tweet without getting slowed down by spell check or struggling to find the right word.

“The ability to read and to spell are so interwoven,” Meyer said. “I think anyone who doesn't understand how words work or know how to spell is going to be at a disadvantage.”

The winner of the regional bee will move on to the national finals in Washington, which will take place May 28 to June 3. According to Scripps National Spelling Bee rules, students who have neither turned 16 nor passed beyond eighth grade, and who attend schools officially enrolled with Scripps, are eligible to participate.

Students like Noah Demitras, a fourth-grader at Deer Lakes East Union Intermediate Center, are already eyeing next year's competition. The 10-year-old is an alternate for Saturday's regional competition, ready to step in if the opportunity arises.

Demitras, whose favorite sport and word to spell is “football,” is an avid reader. He plans to keep reading, which he says helped him learn the words he needed to get this far, in preparation for his chance to spell his way to victory.

“It's pretty much like the Super Bowl,” he said.

Jamie Martines is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-850-2867 or jmartines@tribweb.com.