Riverside County 6th grader to compete in National Spelling Bee finals
A sixth-grader from Corona will be among 40 finalists competing today in the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland.
Aisha Randhawa, who attends Garretson Elementary School, was among 291 spellers taking to the stage of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center for the bee’s second and third rounds Wednesday.
She correctly spelled pentalogy, meaning a narrative work divided into five parts, then spelled bidialectal, meaning someone who is proficient in two dialects of a language.
With those correct words, plus her score on a test of 12 hand-written spelling words and 14 multiple-choice vocabulary questions, Aisha was able to qualify for the finals, whose first segment will begin at 7 a.m. Pacific
Daylight Time and be televised by ESPN2.
The spellers remaining in the competition as of 3 p.m. PDT will take a tiebreaker test of 12 spelling words and 12 vocabulary questions. The test was instituted this year in an effort to avoid the bee ending in a tie as it has the past two years.
The concluding segment of the finals will begin at 5:30 p.m. and be shown on ESPN.
Aisha tied for 22nd in the 2016 national bee. She qualified for this year’s national bee by winning the Riverside County Spelling Bee for the second consecutive year. Her final word was schooner, a fore and aft rigged boat that has at least two masts.
Aisha said science and math are her favorite subjects. She also enjoys playing the piano and hopes to attend Harvard and become an ophthalmologist “because the eyes are the windows to the brain.”
The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below, with contestants ranging in age from 6 to 15 years old.
The initial field consisted of students who won locally sponsored bees in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense schools in Europe.
Six foreign nations were also represented — the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.
The bee’s purpose is to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives, organizers said.
The winner will receive $40,000 from Scripps, which owns television stations and newspapers; a $2,500 U.S. savings bond and complete reference library from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; and $400 in reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica and a three-year membership to Britannica Online Premium, plus trips to Hollywood to appear on the ABC late-night program “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and New York City to appear on the syndicated morning talk show “Live with Kelly and Ryan.”
Four Californians have won the bee, but none from Riverside County.
