Bee sentences
Jan 14th, 2010 by Elsi
Today was the oral Spelling Bee at Elk Creek Elementary, from which I retired in 2002. They invite me back every year, and I am honored to accept. I’ve been doing the Bee for decades now, and fancy I’m quite good at it.
Which is why I was so horrified at the mistake I made! Bee administrators provide sentences for the more advanced words, but I write the sentences for the simpler words. When I finished last night, I did the following sentence for base: Amelia Bedelia thought ‘Take your base’ meant to pick it up and leave. Made perfect sense to me! Amelia Bedelia is a literal person in a series of funny, primary books, and even I know enough baseball to realize what ‘Take your base’ means!
The speller, a 5th grader, spelled bass. I said, “I’m sorry, but that’s a homonym. The correct spelling is base.” And we moved on. At a break, a parent came up to me and pointed out that bass (as in an instrument) would make just as good sense in the sentence.
He was absolutely right! The child’s dad is in an orchestra, and the sentence never mentions baseball! I apologized to the child and her father and returned the girl to the line-up of competitors. She didn’t win the Bee, but she made a good showing, and I was impressed with her ability to pull herself back together and participate after all that!
Hi Elsi,
It sounds like you handled the situation with good grace and diplomacy. I’m sure the young lady will enjoy telling the story in years to come of how her father pointed out the judge’s error and how she got through to the next round. So much more exciting than just getting knocked out.