Setting up the Bee. Here’s what you need to know:

Entry is open to all students studying in Years 3-8 (as of July 22, 2024) in registered Australian schools in Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia who are Australian residents. Entrants must:
(a) attend a school that is officially enrolled to participate in the Competition or be home-schooled, provided the home school is registered in Australia and registered to participate in the Competition. Proof of home school registration will be required and must be sent prior to participation in the Competition to contactus@spelling-bee.com.au;
b) be able to compete as an individual entrant without the assistance of another person;
c) listen to the delivery of the Spelling Bee words via audio on their own; and
d) type and submit responses on their own into the Competition website.

• The Bee is an online-only competition.
• Entrants can enter and complete a Competition Round only once. Maximum of one prize will be awarded per winner.
• Registration is free to all Bee entrants.
• All entrants must have a signed parent/guardian consent form completed and provided to the teacher responsible for running participation in the Bee at the school. Entrants will only be able to participate in the Bee if the teacher or registered home-school parent confirms to the Promoter via the teacher dashboard that they have received a signed consent form from the parent/legal guardian of the entrant.
• The entrant must not have reached the age of 15 on or before February 1, 2024.
• If the entrant is the child of an employee of any News Corp company or any of its suppliers or agencies associated with this Competition, they are not eligible to win the Competition but can take part in the school level competition within the Competition (but their results will not be considered in determining persons eligible to participate in any of the finals).

Registration for an eligible student to participate must be completed online by having their teacher log onto kidsnews.com.au/spelling-bee to register the entrant’s details within the Competition dashboard.

Teachers must use an education email address such as ed.au or ntschools.net or edumail.vic.gov.au to create their own Competition account which will allow them to register children in their class to participate in the Competition. If for some reason this is not possible, contact us at contactus@spelling-bee.com.au

PLEASE NOTE: unless teachers opted-in to retain 2023 registration details, they will need to create a new account for 2024. At the end of the competition, participating teachers will again be able to opt-in to retaining their user registration for 2025. It is otherwise assumed they wish to opt-out and their registration details will not be retained.

CREATING AN ACCOUNT
On the homepage, click on the Register My Class button in the navigation bar. This will direct you to the Teacher Registration page to input all required information, including your education email address.

Once the registration information is input, teachers will receive a Welcome email and be directed to their Teacher Account Dashboard.

REGISTERING YOUR CLASS

Class/student registrations are only available from 2024-07-22 9:00:00 AEST to 2024-08-23 17:00:00 AEST.

PLEASE NOTE: registrations and the School Round of the Competition will run concurrently.

To register a class, go to your Teacher Dashboard by using the Teacher Sign-In on the navigation bar.

Once in the teacher dashboard, click the “Add Class” button. You will then be prompted to enter your class name, reading level and number of students.

Teachers will be able to change the grade for individual students once they are input if you wish them to compete in a higher level.

Default reading levels are:
Years 3-4: default level of Green – this relates to the difficulty of words given to those students.
Years 5-6: default level of Orange – this relates to the difficulty of words given to those students.
Years 7-8: default level of Red – this relates to the difficulty of words given to those students.
Special Needs: grey – this relates to the difficulty of words given to those students. Results will not be counted in finals.

ADDING STUDENTS
Click on ADD STUDENTS.
Please note there is now a bulk student upload feature available to registered teachers. When teachers click on Add Students, they will be given two options: Enter Students Manually OR Import Students from CSV File.

If you elect to bulk-import students, please begin by downloading the CSV template that appears top right and add students in the structure demonstrated.

Manually, the maximum number of students per class is 50. You may add up to 200 students at a time by clicking the yellow “+ add row” button.
Add the name of your class.

In either case, teachers are to enter student’s First Name and Initial only. If two students have the same first name and initial, teachers will be asked to add a number to the end to distinguish between students; ie: Jack A1 and Jack A2.
Note: The teacher will see numbers 1-14 on the screen and there will be a scroll bar to move down to the additional numbers.
Following the completion of the student list, the teacher will be directed back to the class view page.

CONSENT FORM
On the dashboard, teachers will be required to tick a box to confirm receipt of a signed, completed parent/guardian consent form permitting the student to take part in all levels of the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee.
From 2024, a digital consent form is available via the teacher dashboard. The printable version remains available via the teacher dashboard and the Resource Hub.
Without this confirmed consent, students will not be given access to activate and compete in the Bee.
Once the Consent Form box is ticked by the teacher, students will be given a random Access Code to play the Bee.

ACCESS CODE
Each entrant will be given an individualised Access Code to sign in to the Bee. Teachers will be provided with the code for each entrant in their dashboard. There is a tool to download codes for an entire class in the left-hand panel of the dashboard. These can be printed.

New individualised codes will be provided for each student who progresses to finals.

INTEGRITY CHECK
The Integrity Check process has changed since 2022. There is no longer an Integrity Check box that teachers need to click after a student has completed a round of the competition. Instead, by registering an account and adding students to their class, teachers agree that students will be supervised and will complete each round of the Competition in accordance with the Competition rules (See Rules and Regulations section).

• Individual entrants are not permitted to use additional aids or resources, including physical or online dictionaries, Google or other search engine tools, spelling or grammar plug-ins, word lists, mobile phones, tablets, or any other device or object that could be construed as having potential to give spelling advice.
• Entrants must not have any inked or printed writing on the palms of their hands or visible part of their body that could be construed as having the potential to provide spelling advice when they participate.
• Entrants must not have help from other students or teachers during any part of the Competition.

ROUNDS
To begin, the only competition round open will be the national School Round.
Teachers have from July 22 to August 23 for entrants to sit the Bee. Individual students in a class do NOT have to sit the Bee at the same time during the School Round.

As the competition progresses, the dashboard will add a tab to show the next stage of the competition for the State/Territory Finals and following that, the National Final.
The teacher will be able to see which students have progressed in the competition to the subsequent stages by clicking the tabs.

ADDING MULTIPLE CLASSES
Teachers can add other classes and student names during the registration and School Round period by hitting the ADD CLASS button.

WHAT DOES MY DASHBOARD SHOW?
• Name: This shows the student’s name, initial and number (where applicable).
• Access code: This shows the students’ individualised access codes for the current round of the competition.
• Status: This shows the status of the student. There are 3 status types:
1. Ready – This means the student has been added, the teacher has their completed parent/guardian consent form, and they can start the competition when they have been given the access code.
2. In progress – This shows that a student is currently sitting a competition round.
3. Completed – This refers to students who have completed the competition.

• Score: After the Bee is completed by an entrant, this will show the number of correct words spelt by the student.
• Time: This will show the time spent by the student to complete the competition.
• Level: This refers to the level the student is in e.g Green, Orange, Red – determined by the year level of the student.

PROGRESSION TO FINALS
The entrants’ results will be ranked, for each of the Green, Orange and Red categories, on:
Accuracy: How many spelling words are correctly submitted out of 30.
Time: the time it takes for the entrant to spell and submit each word will be recorded. The entrant’s cumulative time to complete all 30 words will be recorded down to the millisecond.
Final ranking: The entrants with a particular accuracy score will be ranked according to their time to complete the Competition Round. That means that all entrants who achieved an accuracy of 30 out of 30 will be ranked in descending order of fastest to slowest and then those who achieved an accuracy of 29 out of 30 will be ranked in descending order of fastest to slowest and so on.
State/Territory Finals: The top 200 ranked entrants from the School Competition Round in each state and territory will be invited to participate in the State and Territory Finals Competition Round.
National Final: The top 3 ranked entrants from the State and Territory Finals Competition Round in each state and territory will be eligible for the National Final.

Teachers will be notified by email of their students’ successful path into finals and the Teacher Dashboard will update automatically.

See Full Terms and Conditions for Determination of Results and Winners.

RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT
Headphones are recommended to hear the audio.
Computer, laptop or tablet.

RECOMMENDED BROWSERS TO USE

STUDENT SIGN-IN
• On the homepage, entrants go to STUDENT ACCESS CODE green button on the right hand side of the navigation
• Entrants will be given an individualised Access Code by their teacher (found in the dashboard) to input upon sign-in to start the Competition. When an entrant is ready to compete in the Competition Round, each entrant must input their code, verify their details (abbreviated name, school and competition level such as Green). The entrant hits the Start button.
• Each entrant is required to answer 30 randomly served spelling words within a 25-second time allowance per word after the audio to each key word finishes. A countdown timer will appear on the screen for each word.
• Each entrant will need to click the “Listen Now” button and this will start the audio for the word to be spelled (Key Word). The Key Word is given to the student by audio with the word spoken first, the word then used in a spoken sentence and the word repeated. Each entrant will need to type the Key Word into the text box which appears on the screen but will be unable to type anything into the text box until the audio has completed – once the audio is complete the text box will become active and the 25-second countdown will begin and cannot be stopped.
• Once the audio has completed, the “Hint” button will also become active to reveal the word definition, origin of the word, type of speech and whether the word is a homophone. Accessing the hint will not interrupt the 25-second countdown. Each entrant must click the “Next Word” button or hit the “Enter” button on the keyboard once they have typed the word to proceed and must do so within 25 seconds after the audio has completed the first time.
• Entrants may listen to the audio as many times as they like during the 25 seconds by clicking the “Listen Again” button, but the 25 second time allowance commences when the audio completes the first time.
• If the 25 seconds runs out before the entrant has finished typing the word, they will automatically proceed to the next word and they will not have submitted a spelling for that Key Word.
• If an entrant does not attempt the word and clicks next they will be penalised for the total 25 second time. That is, they will be deemed to have taken 25 seconds to spell that word.
• After the 30 words are completed, the student is shown a screen with how many words they answered correctly. Their time is not shown on this screen but is registered in the dashboard for their teacher

IMPORTANT:
• Individual entrants are not permitted to use additional aids or resources including physical or online dictionaries, Google or other search engine tools, spelling or grammar plug-ins, word lists, mobile phones, tablets, or any other device or object that could be construed as having potential to give spelling advice.
• Entrants must not have any inked or printed writing on the palms of their hands or visible part of their body that could be construed as having the potential to provide spelling advice when they participate.
• Entrants must not have help from other students or teachers during any part of the Competition.