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Founded 05-05-05

Green Valley Student Advances To Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee

Baron Fenwick Knows His Spelling Words

Story by Corinne Saunders

“I read a lot; that’s probably how I’ve made it so far,” said Green Valley eighth grader Baron Fenwick. “I like reading Charles Dickens and think that’s really helped. I didn’t get into him until recently when my mother suggested him.”

Fenwick won first place at the Winston-Salem Journal Regional Spelling Bee the last weekend in March and will return to Washington, D.C. to compete in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee the week after he gets back from a four-day eighth grade trip to the Nation’s Capital. The National Spelling Bee is May 29 and 30.

Fenwick said he didn’t expect to win the regional spelling bee, “even when I was up there with just the one girl” at the end of the competition.

The final rounds of the regional bee were extremely challenging. “At that point, the words were so hard none of us knew what we were doing,” Fenwick said. “The last few words, I’d never heard before.”

One of Fenwick’s strategies at that point was to use a word’s roots. “Using the roots worked for some of them, like depauperate,” Fenwick said. “The root is pauper.” Depauperate is a habitat lacking biodiversity where very few organisms can survive, he explained.

To prepare for Washington, Fenwick plans to start Great Expectations soon, having already read David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.

“I’ve started reading with a highlighter,” Fenwick said. That way, he explained, he doesn’t have to stop reading to look up a word, but can go back later and find it easily.

In addition to reading, Fenwick tries to study about an hour a day for the national spelling bee.

He has also watched videos of former competitions online. “I know there’s a lot of competition out there,” he said.

Mostly seventh and eighth graders will compete at the national bee, but some younger competitors could be there as well. “A third grader won third place sometime in the ‘90s,” Fenwick said, adding that he didn’t think English was even the kid’s first language.

The national bee consists of two preliminary rounds, the first one written. Competitors receive a list of 25 words, each with four possible spellings, and the contestants have to choose the right one. Each word has a point value depending on its difficulty. The second preliminary round is oral; each contestant must spell one word correctly for 3 points. Contestants have to score 28 points in the first two rounds to advance to the third.

Almost 300 contestants start out in the national bee and last year, only 90 or so made it to the third round, Fenwick said. “They’re trying to knock out a lot of people [in the first two rounds],” he added.

Last year’s bee was won in 13 rounds, the last three of which consisted of only two competitors battling it out, he said.

“I hope that I’ll do well in [the national bee],” Fenwick said. “If I keep studying, then I think I could do well in it. I’m sure I don’t have as much free time as many other contestants do, but I shoot for an hour a day,” he said.

Music is one of the reasons for Fenwick’s lack of free time. He has played piano since kindergarten and also studies viola privately, he said.

He recently was accepted to study piano at N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and plans to attend “at least [for] the first couple years—maybe all four. I want to do something in music,” he said.

When asked if he has composed any music, he said, “nothing of worth yet, but it is a hobby of mine to compose.”

His grandmother on his dad’s side plays piano and his grandmother on his mom’s side plays violin. “My parents say that’s where I inherited my talent from. They both did music growing up but don’t play anymore,” Fenwick said.

As far as school is concerned, Fenwick likes all subjects. “I like school—all of it,” Fenwick said. “I like learning stuff; math is one of my favorites.”

He is interested in medicine as well, and said he may like to be a doctor someday or maybe a lawyer, he laughed.

“There’s not much of a career in spelling,” he joked, adding quickly that it would help with being a journalist.

Spelling Bee Tips from a Winner

When asked about tips for spelling bee hopefuls, Baron Fenwick, first place winner at the Winston-Salem Journal 2008 Regional Spelling Bee, had a few pointers to share:

• Read a lot.

• Use cheap and free resources online. The Winston-Salem Journal’s Paideia study booklet and www.merriam-webster.com are helpful resources, he said. The collegiate online dictionary is his favorite online dictionary because it offers word pronunciations.

• Learn language etymologies. You can ask for a word’s origin in the spelling bee, and this has helped him on occasion, Fenwick said.

• Don’t rush through words in the spelling bee. “It doesn’t happen to me, but I’ve seen really good spellers get nervous and rush,” causing them to miss words, he said. “Since I perform a lot with my music, I don’t have a problem being in front of people,” he said. For those who do, his advice is to “go really slowly [and] try to envision the words in your head so you won’t confuse the sequence of letters.”