Stadley Rough elementary school will send a student to Washington, D.C., at the end of May for a chance as the national spelling bee champion.
Despite this year’s challenges of sponsoring a group to qualify for the national spelling bee, fourth grade student Aahil Nishad will represent the school and compete against dozens of other students from across the country.
On March 6, 13 finalists in the Stadley Rough Spelling Bee championship squared off at the evening event at the school. The top three finalists were Aahil, Fabrizio Quilambaqui and Alexandra Illardi. Aahil won after he correctly spelled “muishond” and “rejoneador.”
The annual regional competition organized by Hearst Media that sends one area student to the Scripps National Spelling Bee was cancelled this year, leaving dozens of young local wordsmiths with little hope of getting to the competition. However, when Stadley Rough teacher Mark Poliquin learned at the beginning of the school year that his students might not have the opportunity to go to the national event, he decided to “self-sponsor” his school’s team. With the help of parents, families and local businesses, Poliquin and his spelling club raised the $3,250 required to send a qualifying student.
“They went to aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors,” Poliquin said. “It was the entire Stadley Rough community.”
The after-school spelling club started 13 years ago and has been under Poliquin’s guidance for the past eight years. The club is open to fourth- and fifth-graders and a few select third-graders. This year’s group started out with more than 30 students and by early March was down to 13. Challenges held every two weeks resulted in the elimination of between one and three students at a time. The final competition at the school was held March 6.
Most of the students, such as Marcus Lopez and Ryan Scappaticci, both in fifth grade, said their parents help by quizzing them after they have studied words.
Fifth grader Iyanna Neal has a schedule that doesn’t allow her much time to attend the after-school program, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She made it to the school’s final competition by studying on her own.
Fourth grader Neville Grey said that learning the right questions to ask and learning the languages of origin have been very helpful tools in correct spelling.
“If it’s Italian, you have to think Italian,” he said, adding that the mock spelling bees after school have also helped his progress. “You need to get them all wrong now, not when you’re competing.”
The Stadley Rough students keep notebooks in which they write definitions, parts of speech, word origin, pronunciation and derivatives. The group meets once a week for an hour during which time they study and participate in mock bees. Then the students are sent home to practice. This year, Poliquin said his students studied nine languages: Latin, German, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Slavic, Dutch, Old English and New World languages (including Hawaiian and West Indies).
At last year’s regional competition held at Western Connecticut State University, Stadley Rough fifth grader Anika Malayappan took first place, beating out 63 other regional competitors and earning a spot at the national competition.
During the Scripps bee in May, students at Stadley Rough will stream the event live into all the classrooms to watch Aahil’s progress