Its not magic its just good spelling

Christopher McCarthy (11) from Coralstown NS, Mullingar, is the winner of the Westmeath County Bee heat which took place today in Gaelscoil an Choillín, Cullionmore, Mullingar, where 20 spelling enthusiasts from around the county competed.

Explaining how he got to be so good at spelling, Christopher, said he loves to read and practices his spellings every day.

He now goes on to take part in the Provincial Spelling Bee competition before the overall final in June, where the four provincial winners will battle it out to be crowned the 2015 Eason Spelling Bee Champion.

1,100 schools from all 32 counties have entered the competition this year, with the County Bees currently underway. School children from all over Ireland will be reciting words from the dictionary in a bid to become the nation’s top speller! Over the last couple of years, some of the most difficult words spelled correctly by Eason Spelling Bee winners include: pragmatism, malapropism, pantomime, pontificate and bibliography.

According to Brendan Corbett, Group Head of Marketing at Eason, “Now in its fifth year, Eason Spelling Bee continues to grow with 1,100 schools taking part this year. This year’s competition is set to be the most exciting year yet with hundreds of young minds hoping to win the Eason Spelling Bee 2015 Champion title. We continue to be more amazed each year by the incredible talent in each school and by the motivation and determination shown by these children. Spelling is a great way to open up the sphere of learning in a fun way and help to develop reading and literacy skills. The enthusiasm from teachers and parents around the country has been unbelievable and we can’t wait to meet all of this year’s ‘bees’!”

Speaking about RTÉ 2fm’s partnership with the Eason Spelling Bee, Ryan Tubridy, RTÉ presenter said, “Last year’s Eason Spelling Bee was fantastic and we at Tubridy on 2fm are absolutely delighted to be a part of it again this year. We love meeting Ireland’s best and brightest so we’re very excited to meet this year’s talented youngsters!”

Last year, Eason extended the competition beyond the classroom with the introduction of the Eason Spelling Bee mobile app. The app is available to download and is the perfect source to learn interactively in a mobile world. The app reads out a word to users at various levels of difficulty and the user in turn types their answer into the app. The Eason Spelling Bee app is free for iPhone and iPad users from the iTunes Store and Eason aims for it to help improve children’s spelling skills.

For more details on the Eason Spelling Bee, visit www.easons.com/spellingbee and stay tuned to RTÉ 2fm for more details.