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Axios
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee runner-up Faizan Zaki wins 2025 title
Faizan Zaki won the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday by correctly spelling "éclaircissement" on the 100th anniversary of the event. The big picture: It's a remarkable comeback for the 13-year-old 6th-grader from Dallas, Texas, who came second in last year's competition. Zoom in: Zaki, a self-confessed "linguistics nerd" who's currently learning French, is a four-time Spelling Bee competitor, per a post on the contest's site. "I was amazed when I won my first school bee. Then I just kept winning," Zaki said, per the Spelling Bee. State of play: The first Spelling Bee featured just nine contestants and was won by 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser, of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1925, who correctly spelled "gladiolus." A hundred years later, "243 spellers earned their spots as national competitors by advancing through regional spelling bees," per a Spelling Bee post. This year's contestants competed against students "representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe," according to the post.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brains, sweat and a dictionary: It's spelling bee week in America
What began with nine competitors 100 years ago now has 243 fighting for the championship title, with millions of viewers expected to tune in to watch athletes of the mind this week. Considered the Super Bowl of its kind, it's National Spelling Bee week, and this isn't your typical New York Times Spelling Bee or Wordle game; to prepare, competitors are given a 'Words of the Champions' study guide with three difficulty levels, where words range from 'twilight' and 'rosan' to 'ecclesiology" and 'teppanyaki.' Beginning Tuesday, young linguists have come from all over the U.S., Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. There will also be participants from the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria to participate in the Scripps Cup this year, fighting for the $52,500 cash prize and a custom trophy — basically the first year's tuition at the Ivy League school they'll likely attend. The event can be watched live on the Scripps National Spelling Bee website, allowing adults to watch in awe and self-deprecation as kids handle the mental pressure to spell words of native English and foreign origins, all on a massive stage. But no pressure. Last year's winner was 12-year-old Bruhat Soma from Tampa, Florida. He spelled 29 out of 30 words correctly in 90 seconds. His winning word was 'abseil,' which means a 'descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above,' per the press release. With the quarterfinals and semifinals taking place on Wednesday, finals will be held past the competitors' bedtimes on Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. MDT. This isn't your typical Little League where everyone gets a medal. Bios of some of the competitors describe their favorite pastimes as 'solving math problems and practicing Bharatanatyam' or 'speedcubing or playing his viola.' If a student spells incorrectly, they're out. May the best brainiac win.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Mountain State scores in reading and math are getting better, national study shows
Jan. 29—Call it a post-COVID push of the good kind. West Virginia's fourth-and eighth-graders in 2024 continued to inch steady improvements in reading and math scores, despite big losses wrought by the pandemic in previous years. That's according to the Nation's Report Card, released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, which charts the academic fortunes of students in the U.S. and Department of Defense Schools across the globe. While students in the Mountain State had academic victories, their counterparts elsewhere were languishing, said Peggy G. Carr, the center's commissioner. "Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance, " Carr continued. "Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students, " she said. "Lower-performing students are struggling — especially in reading." The national average in fourth-grade math, the report card shows, is 237. West Virginia's fourth-graders came in with a collective 232. Eighth-graders across the Mountain State netted an average 261 in math, versus the 272, nationwide. Reading scores for West Virginia's fourth-graders came in at 206, compared to the 214 among their peers across the country. The net reading score of 247 for the eighth grade class here was 10 points lower than the rest of the nation at 257. County-by-county breakdowns aren't shown in this particular snapshot, but Monongalia County students, as shown in more defined assessments, generally outpace their neighbors in West Virginia. Two years ago, for example, nearly 63 % of local students achieved proficiency in English compared to the 55 % showing statewide in those same subjects. More than 61 % of students did the same, compared to the collective 51 % elsewhere in West Virginia.
