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Canku Ota |
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(Many Paths) |
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An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
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March 22, 2003 - Issue 83 |
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On Your Mark, Get Set, Spell! Navajo Spelling Bee Soon Underway |
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by Jim Maniaci Diné Bureau Gallup
Independent
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WINDOW ROCK - Champions, runners-up and alternates are hard at work spelling words from their paideia exotic words their parents most likely have never heard. It's all part of preparing for the annual Independent-Navajo Nation Spelling Bee on March 20 at the Peterson Zah-Navajo Nation Museum-Library with the winner advancing on to Washington, D.C., May 25 to 30 to compete with about 250 other top spellers. The newspaper pays for the week-long trip to America's capital city, with one chaperone. The actual two-day competition will be May 28 and 29 to see who will succeed Pratyush Buddiga, who won the 75th Bee as a 13-year-old Mountain Ridge Middle School student in Colorado Springs, Colo., as America's best youthful speller of the English language. Based on a Greek word that means to educate the child, the paideia is a handbook with various levels of difficulty in spelling words. Students also practice from much larger dictionaries. During the contest, each boy or girl comes to the microphone, hears a word pronounced, repeats the pronunciation, then spells it letter by letter. The student also can ask for the definition to be given as well as having the word used in a sentence, before beginning his or her spelling of the word. All five agencies have selected their winners, with the top two from each grade (or the alternate, if one of them can't compete that day,) qualifying for the Navajo Nation finals in Window Rock. By agency, the champion, runner-up and alternate, with their grades and schools, are:
Each year the Office of Diné Youth conducts qualifying rounds in each agency after schools pick their entrants. Then the ODY puts on the reservation championship in the tribal capital with the newspaper as the sponsor. |
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