Countywide : Top Speller Wins on Word New to Him

Hwa Jo, a sixth-grader at Lawrence Elementary School, credited his ability to listen carefully for winning the Garden Grove Elementary School Spelling Championship on Friday.

When the judges asked him to spell reciprocal, he was ready.

“I’d never heard the word,” said Jo, as he caressed his championship trophy. “I just listened for the sounds and took it from there.”

Jo competed against 32 other pupils in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades in the Garden Grove Unified School District to win the spelling title. The students were asked to spell such words as license , identical , irresistible and mortgage during the competition at Carillo Elementary School.

But it came down to reciprocal , a word that Amanda Morris, a finalist, struggled with. The sixth-grader at Enders Elementary School left out the “i” and lost to Jo.

“She has always been a good speller, ever since she was a little girl,” Amanda’s mother, Julie Morris, said. “She only studied the words for a couple of days.”

Words used in the contest were selected from the Random Sixth-Grade List and Words List booklet complied by the Somoma County Office of Education.

“The two most important aspects of this are to recognize students who excel in spelling and to introduce them to the world of competition,” said Alan Trudell, a district spokesman. “It also shows how important it is to master the English language.”

Jo and Morris will compete in the Orange County Spelling Championship on Feb. 1 in Costa Mesa.