ABIGAIL GAMBLE FROM CASTLEWELLAN IS CROWNED COUNTY DOWN CHAMPION
The Eason Spelling Bee has experienced record growth in 2014 receiving over 30% more entries from Northern Ireland compared to the previous year.
Counties Down and Antrim appear to be the most avid spellers accounting for the highest number of Northern Ireland schools in the competition which will see close to 150 schools taking part from the six counties.
Kicking off the competition this week was the Down County Bee hosted by St Colmcille’s Primary School in Downpatrick where Abigail Gamble from Annsborough Integrated Primary School in Castlewellan was crowed County Bee Winner. Abigail will go forward to represent her county in the Ulster Final taking place in Eason’s flagship store in Belfast where she will battle it out to secure a place at the All-Ireland Final in Dublin.
Attracting over 1,000 schools across the island of Ireland, the Eason Spelling Bee is part of an overall Eason literacy and reading initiative that aims to inspire children to develop a greater appreciation of words in a fun and educational way, and to encourage them to perfect their spelling and also to hone their pronunciation skills.
According to Catherine Cahill, Brand Manager at Eason, “Now in its fourth year, our schools competition has gone from strength to strength across the island of Ireland and we’re thrilled to mark such a growth in numbers from Northern Ireland. Spelling is a fantastic way to open up the world of learning to children in a fun way, and creating the building blocks to support a lifetime of reading and literacy. The support from teachers and parents across the country has been superb and we are looking forward to meeting all of the talented ‘bees’!”
This year Eason has extended the competition beyond the classroom with the introduction of the Eason Spelling Bee mobile app. The interactive learning app emulates the real life event in a mobile world. The app reads out a word to users at various levels of difficulty, the user in turn types their answer into the app. Eason will regularly challenge users of the app throughout the year with new words. The Eason Spelling Bee app is free for iPhone and iPad users from the iTunes Store and Eason aims for it to help improve children’s spelling skills.
The Eason Spelling Bee has an overall prize fund of books worth more than £17,000. For more details on the Eason Spelling Bee, run in partnership with RTÉ 2fm’s Tubridy, visit www.easons.com/spellingbee.
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