Two children from The Dolphin School in Montpelier were among the winners in a national French spelling competition earlier this month.
Six pupils from the school won places in the finals of the University of Cambridge Tranlastion Bee, a contest that involved 1,200 children from across the country showing off their foreign language skills.
Bobby Craig, from Year 6, was the overall winner, while Suhanna Gill, from Year 5, finished in third place in the Primary Bee. The pair were presented with their trophies by Patricia Dalby, director of The Cambridge Alliance Française. Bobby’s first-place success also won his school a year’s free subscription to Vocab Express, an online language learning platform that will help more Dolphin School pupils follow in Bobby and Susanna’s footsteps.
“We are so proud of Bobby and Suhanna’s efforts,” explained Hannah White, languages lead at The Dolphin School. “Not only did the two of them memorise so many French words, but they performed so well under intense pressure at a national event.”
“We were on hallowed ground – Stephen Hawking himself has sat in the very lecture hall where the finals took place!”
The aim of the Primary Bee is for students in Years 5 and 6 who have started learning a foreign language in Key Stage 2 to practise and improve their vocabulary, pronunciation and memory skills in the target language.
All Year 5 and 6 pupils at The Dolphin School enter stage 1 and learn the initial word list of 40 words. Class winners then learn an additional 40 words for the stage 2 school competition. School winners learn another 40 – making a total of 120 foreign words and phrases – for the stage 3 national final. www.dolphinschoolbristol.org