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Last Wednesday, on the 10th of July, a team of 6 Harris Crystal Palace students, including me, took part in the annual federation Spelling Bee, hosted at Harris South Norwood this year. Before leaving, we had some practise at school, in order to prepare before going there. We arrived on time this year, unlike the last! As we walked into their assembly hall and seated ourselves down, we were handed I.D badges on which we were to write our names on. Each I.D badge had the school's name and colour on it.

After an introduction by an English teacher at the school, we were sent off into different rooms to do a quick-fire round of spelling. We were split into year groups for this round. There were two from each year group in every Harris (e.g. two year 7's, two year 8's, two year 9's, etc.). The teacher would read out a word and the first school to buzz in would have to spell it. I found this alright because it was quite interesting but our buzzer couldn't be heard very well so we tended to lose points due to that.

The quick-fire round was followed by the cowboy round. I wasn't necessarily looking forward to this but it turned out to be a lot easier than expected. The teacher read out a difficult word and we had to put on cowboy hats, write it on a whiteboard, take a few steps and 'draw'. We faced Harris Academy Bromley at this. Although I was out on the first round, it was enjoyable to see other people spelling all of these different words and the look of relief on their faces when they'd spelt it right! After Harris Bromley beat us (by only one point) we had lunch and made our way back downstairs. Luckily, we were still in, some schools got knocked out at this stage.

The next round was the word workout round. We were given a sentence with a certain word missing, a word that was particularly hard to spell. This was the most difficult because it took a lot of brain power rather than just being able to spell well and listening to the 'Countdown' timer was very off-putting and put a lot of pressure on our shoulders. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky this time and didn't make it past this round, which were the quarter finals. Harris Academy Merton and Harris Academy Beckenham continued to go on to the final; however, Merton took the trophy for this year. We then applauded all the schools and were all handed certificates for participation.

I really enjoyed the Spelling Bee as I had never done anything like it and it was definitely a new experience to me. I hope I get chosen for the team next year and hope that we claim – and keep – the trophy too!

Khadija 7AA