Spelling

It took a full marching band, more than one official resolution, a Baltimore Raven and two busloads of screaming sixth-graders to properly send Baltimore's first world-class speller in at least a generation off to The Big Show. David Brokaw, a Friends School sixth-grader with bright eyes and circumspect grin, is headed to Washington for the National Spelling Bee, where today he'll face some serious c-o-m-p-e-t-i-t-i-o-n. He'll be Baltimore's first representative at the esteemed contest of words in 25 years and one of the few city students ever to compete there.

Editor's note: In her biweekly column, Jerdine Nolen today explores spelling and what parents can do to help their children master this challenge.Spelling is the forming of words with letters in an established order. It is a developmental skill, so practice is essential. Seeing correctly spelled words and learning to write the proper sequence of letters in a word can help us improve. It takes a lot of practice in the beginning until this method of representing sounds and letter is mastered.

Forewarned and preparedNO ONE could say we were not prepared, that we were not warned. When Hurricane Floyd stormed through Maryland, emergency precautions were made well in advance and news of the storm's progress was regularly updated.Flooding from the tempest's torrential rains was widespread. The town of North East in Cecil County was inundated by brown rushing waters that overflowed the banks of the North East River; a portion of the bridge on Route 272 into the town was washed away.

Summer, swimming and... spelling!Help your child find words she often uses and often misspells. Then encourage her to practice the spelling by following these steps: Look at it. Say it. Name the letters. Write it. Check. Some typical primary-grade words from the story "Hattie and the Wild Waves" are: do, when, make, went, home, little, blue.Here is another spelling technique for difficult words. Write the complete word in large letters and allow your child to study the configuration of the word and the sequence of the letters.

A Hollifield explains why 'Hollofield' isn't as sweetThe two letters that appeared in The Sun in Howard (June 14 and July 12) concerning the correct spelling of Hollifield Station were recently brought to my attention.The first of these incorrectly stated that Hollofield was the correct spelling. The place was named for my family, on whom I have done research for many years.I hope you will permit me to provide enough detail about the matter to set the record straight.The place name derives from my great-great grandparents, William and Sophia Hollifield, who lived in the old house at Ellicott's Upper Mills.

"Curious George: Reads, Writes, and Spells for Grades 1 & 2." Houghton-Mifflin Interactive (hmi), 120 Beacon Street, Somerville, Mass. 02143. Suggested retail price $44.95.This interactive CD-ROM is the fourth title in Houghton-Mifflin's Young Reader's series. The program captures children's interest using the familiar and lovable storybook character, Curious George. His exploits take him on adventures as a cub reporter following the story. There are 12 activities along the way in which children maneuver George around various obstacles and help him stay out of trouble while they practice building reading, writing, spelling and vocabulary skills.

Questioning tests for special ed studentsChildren receiving special education services in Maryland schools will not be served well by the proposed series of high school assessment tests that State Schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick wants all students to pass, with an unspecified grade, to receive a Maryland high school diploma.There has been no discussion and certainly no resolution of the following concerns: How will the core learning goals curriculum be differentiated for students receiving special education services and who will pay for this?

THE HOLIDAY season has arrived and once again we are faced with a question that has perplexed the English-speaking world for decades: What is the correct spelling of the Jewish holiday that will be celebrated next week?The most common spellings are: Hanukkah, Chanukah and Hanukah, but other variations abound. They include: Hanuka, Hanukka, Chanuka, Chanukka and Chanukkah.Last year, the U.S. Postal Service weighed in with a ''Hanukkah'' stamp. This may have settled the matter once and for all by having a single spelling officially sanctioned by an agency of the U.S. government.

How do you spell failure?The citizens of Middletown, Calif., an agricultural community 60 miles north of San Francisco, feared the answer was on the letters page of their local newspaper.There they found more than two dozen letters from eighth-graders furious about an outbreak of vandalism at their school. Departing from its usual practice, the newspaper ran the letters exactly as they had been written. It didn't take long to figure out why.For starters, the 25 students spelled "vandal" in nearly as many ways.

From the sound of it, Theodore Bikel has just an ordinary job.But not everyone is so familiar with the man and his work.Theater historySeven minutes before he went on stage at yesterday's matinee, Bikel decided to make a quick phone call to a producer in Jupiter, Fla. He stood by his makeup mirror while a young man in the box office tried to take a message."

Attention, prospective home-buyers: looking for a killer deal with the real estate market up in flames? Is all this recession, recession, recession talk getting you down? For a measly $150 million, you can buy Aaron Spelling's place, a 57,000-square-foot L.A. estate called "The Manor" that has a gym, bowling alley, tasting room, gift-wrapping room, humidity-controlled silver-storage room and beauty salon. There's also a screening room where the screen rises out of the floor like a gleaming silver altar.

Real estate downturns aside, 90210 is still a very good ZIP code. Slated to premiere Sept. 2, the CW's new version of the Aaron Spelling classic has dominated the entertainment press this pilot season like few other new television shows. Of course, TV fans have been hungry to learn who will be cast as the new clique of rich kids, but they seem even more interested in which of the old characters who left the prime-time schedule eight years ago might be stopping by West Beverly High or the Peach Pit. It's a challenge that executive producers Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah (Freaks and Geeks)

Richard W. Story once spent 20 hours in front of a mirror over a span of several days, but not to admire his anchorman-worthy hair. Instead, he was practicing the pronunciation of 500 words for the first Howard County Spelling Bee. Still, he ended up adding an extra "er" to "embroider," and the unsuspecting student speller was eliminated from the contest by the judge, he said. The girl was quickly reinstated, though, for correctly spelling the incorrect word he'd given her, he added. But after he mispronounced "tilde," which is an accent placed over the letter "n" in the Spanish language, as "tilled" instead of "til-duh" -- a gaffe that stumped all the students -- he said library director Valerie Gross later told him he was "being promoted" from pronouncer to emcee.

Bill will open doors for disabled athletes Milton Kent fears that passage of the Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities bill opens up a "potentially massive can of worms" ("Bill went too far," April 15). But those of us who daily serve the disability community are appalled at the can of worms his elitist comments have opened up. This bill may not be perfect. What piece of legislation ever is? And there will certainly be bumps along the way. The transition from big-picture theory to implementation at the grassroots level is never simple, no matter what the issue is. But this bill marks the first step toward equality on the playing fields for students with disabilities.

A spelling error led court officials to free a wanted teenager who had been caught after he fled an out-of-state treatment facility, according to a review of court documents. Shortly after Jeffrey Clinton Butler was mistakenly let go, he was fatally shot once in the face outside a friend's house in Southwest Baltimore on March 23. The 18-year-old, who had escaped from a Coatesville, Pa., facility in November, was arrested by city police in mid-March on a disorderly conduct charge. He gave authorities a fake name, but police learned his identity from his fingerprints.

It took a full marching band, more than one official resolution, a Baltimore Raven and two busloads of screaming sixth-graders to properly send Baltimore's first world-class speller in at least a generation off to The Big Show. David Brokaw, a Friends School sixth-grader with bright eyes and circumspect grin, is headed to Washington for the National Spelling Bee, where today he'll face some serious c-o-m-p-e-t-i-t-i-o-n. He'll be Baltimore's first representative at the esteemed contest of words in 25 years and one of the few city students ever to compete there.

Hearing that Mayor Sheila Dixon hopes to spit-shine Baltimore's streets with a snappy new campaign to reform even the worst litterers, Sun readers jumped to help. Eager to share their wisdom, to save the city money and, most of all, to see how the city would look clean, Baltimoreans submitted to us dozens of anti-litter slogan suggestions -- many of which are even printable. Some people revealed their inner poet: "Stash it, Don't Trash it." "Litter -- It makes the City and Planet Bitter."

THE ISSUE: The Howard County Spelling Bee is being held Friday. Is there one word that you misspell or see others misspell all the time? Let us know, but please spell it right. YOUR VIEW: Send e-mail responses by tomorrow to howard.speakout @baltsun.com. A selection of responses will be published Sunday. Please keep your responses short and include your name, address and telephone number. Addresses and phone numbers will not be published.

THEATER BE SPELLBOUND Brush up your orthographic skills. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee launches its national tour at the Hippodrome Theatre on Tuesday. The Broadway musical -- in which adult actors portray adolescents competing in a spelling contest -- has a score by William Finn, a 2005 Tony Award-winning script by Rachel Sheinkin and direction by James Lapine. But audiences don't just sit back and watch the actors sing and spell. A few select theatergoers also appear on stage at each performance.

As Christopher Nusbaum reads Polar Bears Past Bedtime, his right hand moves from left to right on the page, his middle finger running over the Braille characters. For Christopher, 8, of Taneytown, who has been blind since birth, reading is a passion. He has finished four books in the past week and is a half-year ahead in reading level. Next weekend in Los Angeles, Christopher will get to demonstrate his skills in the competitive setting of the Braille Challenge, an academic contest that will test him and 11 other first- and second-graders on spelling, reading comprehension and proofreading.