Each year, Routes into Languages run a national spelling bee competition for Year 7 students who are studying French, German and Spanish. There are four stages of the competition with 50/100 words to learn at each stage (300 altogether). This would equate to about a third of the words needed for the new GCSE at Foundation tier and is a fun and motivating way to learn useful high-frequency language!

After success both at school level and in the South West stage of the competition, Backwell School were delighted that three Year 7 students, Anna and Amelie (French) and Maya (Spanish) won places in the spelling bee final at Cambridge University. This was a massive achievement as they made up the final 98 students out of the 21,099 who started the competition this year.

The final, held on 30 June, was fast and furious and the competition was fierce but the girls held their nerve and managed to successfully spell a lot of words from the random word generator with excellent enunciation in spite of the pressure!

After a nail-biting afternoon, we were thrilled that Anna was eventually awarded second place overall for French, which is a fantastic achievement!

Well done to all those who took part.