This brother and sister team really know their ABC.
Bellbridge Primary School pupils Jochebed and Joey put their spelling skills to the test earlier this month for the Wyndham Spelling Bee, battling it out against 14 other schools.
Joey, 9, took out the grade 3 and 4 competition, scoring both a trophy for himself and one for his school.
His 10-year-old sister also made it to the final, but tripped at the last hurdle on the word ‘icicle’ to become runner-up in the grade 5 and 6 category.
“It wasn’t too scary, because we couldn’t really see the faces of the audience, because the lights were really, really bright,” Jochebed said.
Joey added: “It was still nerve-wracking, going up on stage.
“But I praise God for being able get through it and win the spelling bee for the school. Some of the words were trick ones, but none of them were hard ones.
“One of them was ‘gait’, but instead of assuming it was ‘gate’, I asked for the definition.”
The Tarneit pair, who both love reading Roald Dahl books, said students were given a 60-page dossier that contained 75 per cent of the words that could be used during the spelling bee two weeks before the competition.
Both said there had been no sibling rivalry. although Jochebed did note: “He got a bigger trophy.”
