Spelling Bee at St Mary’s

PUPILS at St Mary’s Primary School are looking forward to hosting a Spelling Bee later this month as children from across the county show off their skills in this year’s event.

Eason, Northern Ireland’s leading retailer of books, stationery, magazines and much more, today launched the Eason Ulster Spelling Bee 2012 – an exciting and fun competition aimed at encouraging child literacy across all nine counties and highlight that spelling is fun.

Over the next month primary school children in P7 will be buzzing in from across Northern Ireland to take part in the Eason Spelling Bee which has an overall prize fund of books worth more than £16,000.

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Spelling Bee, Eason has made this year’s contest bigger and better by introducing “County Bees” whereby schools that enter will compete with other schools in the same county to decide the county winner.

In Co. Down the “County Bee” is taking place in St Mary’s Primary School, Banbridge on April 25 and schools across the county are encouraged to enter.

Winners from this event will then be invited to attend the Ulster final in June with the victors heading to the all-Ireland final in Dublin on June 22 to battle it out to be crowned the “Eason Spelling Bee 2012”.

Marketing Manager, Eason said: “In 2011 Eason received such an overwhelming response from schools, parents and, more importantly, children that this year we’ve created an even bigger competition giving all schools the opportunity to compete in County Bees. We really want to encourage as many primary schools from Co. Down to enter and be part of it. In light of the challenging budgets schools are faced with today, each All-Ireland Finalist will share in a total prize fund of library books worth over £16,000 - an incredibly worthy prize.”

Schools can enter by emailing [email protected] or by turning up at their local Spelling Bee at least 30 minutes before the event starts so that the relevant forms can be filled in.

Schools which register to take part will be provided with an Eason Ulster Spelling Bee School Pack containing rules, competition formats and words to be used when conducting their own individual spelling contest to select the Spelling Bee to represent their school in the county final and beyond.

For more information check in store for details on how to register or visit www.easons.com/spellingbee.