Year 7 students from Woodham Academy joined students from schools across the North East to put their multi-lingual spelling skills to the test. Year 7 students at Woodham Academy have been mastering the art of speedy spelling in French.

They have been competing in class and school competitions to find the 4 top spellers in Year 7. On Tuesday 26th March the school champions: Charlotte Lough, Euan Wilson, Lucy Ratcliffe and Josh Blackburn represented Woodham Academy at the regional final at Sunderland University.

For this regional final, the students were provided with a list of 150 words to learn and the Regional Final gave them the chance to compete against students from other schools for the first time.

A memory test and a speaking competition rolled into one, 11 year-old students had one minute to spell aloud as many memorised words as they could in French.  Hearing in one language and speaking in another is one of the skills perfected by interpreters, known as ‘switching’.

The students thoroughly enjoyed this exciting challenge. Mr Coley, Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Woodham said: “It was such great fun! Our students did exceptionally well and I’m very proud of them all. They worked very hard and have been thoroughly committed.”