Cranford Review 2016

News from the LRC
We
Cranford’s Students win
Hounslow Secondary Schools Spelling Bee 2016
are delighted to announce that four year 7 Cranford students triumphed in ‘The Hounslow
Secondary Schools Spelling Bee’ 2016 winning the competition against tough opposition.
The Spelling Bee final on Tuesday 12th July 2016 was held at the Heathland School. Haroon Lukka,
Corben Smith, Zehra Hasan and Filsan Abdilahi battled it out against 6 other local schools to win
first place. Cranford made it through the first two rounds successfully and flew straight into the final
round against the Heathland School. It was a nail-biting experience for us all.
20 year 7 students were invited in April to an internal heat organised to trial out for the team. Since
then the successful four students have been practising two hours a week with the support and guidance
of their mentor ‘Queen Bee’, Ms Mensa, who has worked really hard with the team in ensuring they
were ready for success.
This initiative was started at Cranford in 2013. Each year the winning school hosts the following year’s
event. We are very excited as Cranford will host the Spelling Bee for the 3rd time in 2017.
Mahavir Ladva (Library and Study Centres Manager)
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“The Spelling Bee was probably the most exciting
experience I’ve had in year 7. Here’s why:
The start was quite pressurising. We got to choose 3 words
each of either easy, medium, or hard difficulty to yield
more points. The top 4 qualified into round 2. When it was
our turn, we were feeling so focussed. I was first. I lead
the team choosing 3 hard words and obtaining 6 points.
Then it was my classmates’ turns. Overall we managed to
get 30/36 points (the most of all the teams) so we qualified
to the semi-finals.
The next round was the semi-finals. Our challenge was
to get none wrong. We nominated two people to do the
challenge. This was very pressurising because one
mistake would cost the team. After a few rounds two of
the schools started to slip up under pressure (what did
I tell you?). The last round was the finals. This was the
most pressurising because there were only 2 schools left
and to lose would be very unlucky. Then the Heathlands
School spelt wrongly. We won.
Overall I think this was an exhilarating experience”.
Haroon Lukka (year 7)
“When I was accepted into the team, I felt extremely
excited, yet when it came to practising (after school,
Tuesday and Thursday): I was flabbergasted- there
were so many difficult words in the English language
that I had never read or heard of ever before. I did not
think I would ever learn words like “blasphemous” and
“miscellaneous”. However, over time, I was luckily able
to learn these words and some techniques to help along
the way. It has enhanced my ability to spell a great deal,
and I was extremely glad.
Soon the proper team was decided, and I was thrilled
to have been accepted, yet I was a little nervous, as the
Spelling Bee Competition was only a few weeks away.
Corben, Haroon, Filsan and I (the Spelling Bee team)
were then asked to do even more hard practising to get
our spelling skills up to exceptional. We were given a
list of some of the possible words that could be in the
competition, and a Spelling Bee dictionary and revised
them too. These spellings have helped me a lot, as they
have helped me spell words that I did not know how to
spell before, and words that I was spelling incorrectly.”
Zehra Hasan (year 7)