Islands Top 20 Spellers emerge
View(s):An all island schools spelling competition and searching for the islands best speller proves to be easier said than done. From Jaffna, to Dambulla, Ratnapura, Kurunegala, Kandy, Colombo and Matara, most kids had to endure the pressure, learn how to hold their nerves, be confident, collect their thoughts and spell the word out regardless of whether they knew the spelling or not. A majority of the kids left the judges in awe by maintaining their composure and spelling words they had never heard of before correctly.
Spellmaster started off with 8,000 kids and was brought down to 3,000 by way of a dictation test that was conducted in 22 districts. These 3,000 were then reduced to the top 500 in 7 competitions held provincially in the real format of the competiton, where competitors come on stage and are given one minute to spell words given at random. The top five hundred were then divided into 5 groups of 100 each from which 20 contestants were selected to form the top100. In a series of four competitions, of 25 contestants each, five contestants were chosen to form the Top 20.
A few surprises this year , where we see for the first time 2 sisters, Charya and Bhagya in the top 20. Also in the top 20 we have Highlands College Hatton , Visakha Vidiyalaya Colombo 05 , S.Thomas’ Preparatory School Kollupitiya and Girls High School Kandy having more than one competitor in the top 20. This year the competition is open with Archana Perera of St. Peter’s College Colombo 4 and Vasika Udurawane of S.Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia, contenders who were the runner-up and 3rd runner-up last year bowing out due to just misspelling a letter of the words they seemed to have known given to them. With both of them bowing out, this year’s Spellmaster is bound to be a surprise and will keep everyone guessing.
A massive change in this year’s composition of the Top 20 is that the Western Province dominates with 10 contestants, nine from Colombo and one from Kalutara. The Central Province follows closely with 7 competitors and from the Uva, Sabaragammuwa & North Western Provinces one competitor each, all battling it out for the title.
As one of the contestants who made it to the Top 20, Ramith Fonseka of S. Thomas’ Preparatory School Kollupitiya, with regard to what he acquired from taking part in Spellmaster, said he had an idea that he knew English quite well, however, the competition showed he was wrong, and that in fact there were so many spellings he didn’t know and it showed him words he had no clue of how to spell and he said that was a good thing because he learnt from his mistakes and rectified them.
Over the next 8 weeks every week two contestants will be eliminated at each competition until the final four who will compete in the Grand Finale are revealed. The competition is surely becoming intense, Make sure you watch the award winning edutainment programme on Sirasa TV every Sunday at 6 pm.
| The following are the names and schools of the Top 20:
Lithmal Jayawardhana-Ananda College Colombo 10 |
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