Local charter school students compete in Scripps Spelling Bee program

WEST COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — Students at the South Carolina Virtual Charter School on Platt Springs Road in West Columbia participated in the nationally recognized Scripps Spelling Bee program this morning.

One by one, the 14 students in fifth through eighth grades took turns spelling a word, with lots of anticipation and nerves in between.

The words were called out to them by a group of judges who were handed a list for each round out of a sealed envelope.

Young spellers tackled words like congregation, contagion, fallow, malicious, incense, and innards — until only eighth grader Alayna Lanier was left.

Lanier’s winning word? Uncanny.

Michelle Patterson is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the school.

“I think it’s just exciting for students to be able to have opportunities to showcase the hard work that they do at school everyday. School is not just about a grade that you get on a report card or a test, it’s about showing off what you know. And so the students were able to do that today,” says Patterson.

Lanier will have another chance to showcase her spelling talents in march, when she heads to Charlotte to compete in the Scripps Regional Spelling Bee competition.

Patterson describes how the bee came to be, saying, “I got an email from Scripps introducing their program and telling us how it would go. I did all the orientations and meetings and decided this is the way we wanted to go, and so we started planning back in September. I think everything went really, really well today for our first annual event and I’m looking forward to continuing this in the future.”

Should Lanier win in Charlotte, she will go on to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland this May.