STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 After two nights of Staten Island students showing off their best spelling skills during the Staten Island District 31 Spelling Bee this week, 16 borough students will vie for the top spelling spot in the citywide spelling bee.<\/p>\n
The annual spelling bee was held over the course of two nights at Michael J. Petrides School, Sunnyside, on Jan. 14 and 15, as 86 students from 43 schools competed for a chance to head to the citywide bee. <\/p>\n
The final eight students from both nights will compete against the winners from across the entire city. The citywide spelling bee winner will then advance to Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
Students gathered in the Petrides cafeteria, laughing and talking before the bee officially kicked off on stage in the school\u2019s auditorium. Participants had already won spelling bees at their respective schools ahead of the districtwide competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019m doing this, but I\u2019m not nervous,\u201d said Alexandra Coughlin, a student at Bernstein Intermediate School (I.S. 7). \u201cI studied a lot and went through all my school spelling bees.\u201d<\/p>\n
The winning word on Thursday night was \u201cibuprofen\u201d \u2014 correctly spelled by first-place winner Dylan Patyka, a student at PS 52. <\/p>\n
\u201cI did a lot to get ready,\u201d said Dylan. \u201cWhen I heard the alternate pronunciations [for ibuprofen], I was like \u2018I got this.\u2019 I\u2019m not really doing anything different [for the citywide bee], I\u2019ll continue studying, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second-place winner was Peter Freidman of PS 41, and the third-place winner was Tess Santiago of Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School.<\/p>\n
The five additional students who will advance to the city bee from Thursday night\u2019s competition are: Callan Roldan of Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School; Abraham Mathai of PS\/I.S. 48; Everley Cho of PS 42; Samantha Padmore of PS 44; and Parizay Ali of Prall Intermediate School (I.S. 27).<\/p>\n
The first-place winner from Wednesday night was Fariza Kholmatova of Paulo Intermediate School (I.S. 75) for correctly spelling \u201coctuplicate.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nicholas Dechbery of Barnes Intermediate School (I.S. 24) secured the spot for second place, while Aliza Aranovich of Totten Intermediate School (I.S. 34) won third place.<\/p>\n
The additional students from Wednesday night\u2019s competition who will advance to the citywide spelling bee are: Charlotte Couso of PS 30; Gia Genovese of PS 3; Oliver Innocent of PS 58; Nina Mikullovci of PS 29; and Benjamin Patterson of PS 53.<\/p>\n
District Spelling Bee Coordinator Marygrace DiForte hosted the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 After two nights of Staten Island students showing off their best spelling skills during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-102474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}