Again, you will need to email the bee coordinator if you don’t know whether your bee will include vocabulary
IF the bee is spelling only:
- You will need to be able to spell every word on Spell-It!. Regardless of where you are competing, if you don’t know Spell-It! cold your chances of winning are pretty slim
- Be aware of general spelling/language patterns so you are able to deal with Additional Words* that you are not familiar with
IF the bee includes vocabulary:
- Everything listed under spelling only
- Consider getting a Word Club from spellingbee.com. This resource will provide a convenient way to study all of Spell It!, which is every word you can be asked at the Regional Bee. If this is too pricey, peruse Spell-It! and make sure you know the definitions of all 1,155 words you could be asked.
All the best spellers from your entire region are competing in this bee, so chances are a lot of them are also going to know Spell-It! like the back of their hand. This means the bee will have to resort to Additional Words to find a winner. This is what makes Regional Bees so hard and unpredictable. The words are much harder than those of the Classroom, School, or District Bees and for some of them you may be required to have previously seen them to stand a chance. However, a very good percentage of them are in the Consolidated Word List. Flipping through the list may not be a bad idea in preparation for Additional Words, but if you are going to tackle all 23,414 words you must be very organized in your study. Doing so may be implausible in the amount of time you have before the bee.
For reference, here are the Additional Words used across all bees in some years past:
2010 Regional Bee Additional Words
2013 Regional Bee Additional Words