HEN Spelling Bee Junior Division Rules

1. For spellers in grade levels 1st through 4th. Spellers will be taken one grade level at a time starting with the 1st grade group.

2. The HEN Spelling Bee will be an oral competition, with elimination on a "miss and out" basis in the traditional spelling bee manner.

3. Words used in the HEN Spelling Bee - Junior Division, shall be selected from the Junior grade level lists.

4. The speller may ask the caller to pronounce the word again, define it, use it in a sentence, provide the part of speech, and/or provide the language of origin. Root word questions will not be answered by the judges. When the judges agree that the word has been reasonably explained with the above aids, they may ask for the spelling of the word.

5. If a word has one or more homonyms, the caller will indicate which word is to be spelled. If the listed word is not properly identified, any correct spelling of any homonym of the word will be accepted.

6. The speller shall not be disqualified for failing to note that a word is capitalized.

7. After the caller gives the contestant a word, the contestant is encouraged to pronounce the word, spell the word, and pronounce the word again. (Please encourage your child to think carefully before speaking to avoid starts, stops, and restarts in spelling the word.) In the junior level, the child may change his or her spelling before he or she pronounces the word a final time. No changes can be made in the spelling of the word after the final pronunciation of the word by the contestant. The judges may not disqualify a speller for failing to pronounce the word either before or after spelling it.

8. When a speller fails to spell a word correctly, he or she must drop out of the contest. Another word shall then be given to the next contestant in line.

9. An appeal may be voiced to a coordinator, by a parent of the speller who is seeking reinstatement in the contest, but not from any individual seeking to dislodge another speller from the competition. The deadline for voicing an appeal is before the speller affected would have received his or her next word had he or she stayed in the competition. No appeal will be entertained after that word has been given to another speller.

10. In Junior division, the elimination procedure changes when the contestants are reduced to two. At that point, as soon as one contestant misspells a word, the other contestant immediately shall be given an opportunity to spell the same word. If the second contestant spells the word correctly, plus the next word on the caller's list, then the second contestant shall be declared the champion.

11. If one of the last two spellers misses and the other, after correcting the error, misspells the new word submitted to him, then the misspelled new word shall be referred to the first speller for correction. If the first speller then succeeds in correcting the error and correctly spells the next word on the caller's list, then he shall be declared the champion.

12. If both misspell the same word, both shall continue in the contest. The speller who first misspelled the word shall be given a new word to spell.

13. Judges' decisions are final.