Dawson County elementary and middle school spellers are warming up and moving on to compete in this year's district spelling bee.

Riverview and Black's Mill Elementary Schools held their local level bees last week, seeing their best spellers compete against each other.

With words like tantrum, value and even compound words like well-to-do being rattled off with dictionary precision, students proved they were ready to take on all challengers.

The bee was designed to "help students spell quickly and accurately, enhance the student's understanding of vocabulary in relation to spelling, promote students correct word usage, help students correct misspelled words automatically, help students learn to compete and provide an environment to promote students' self-esteem, character development and sportsmanship," according to lead teacher Cindy Sanford, who oversees the bees for most of the elementary schools in the county.

Over the course of the first two weeks of January, classes at each elementary school in the county will gather the best spellers in their classrooms and compete locally to find the school's best spellers. Following that, students will compete in the district bee and potentially beyond.

According to Sanford, the local bees are conducted through computer based test as well as oral challenges. Once a student moves on from the district to the state bee, only oral formats would be given.

"This format was chosen because the final levels in the national bee are totally oral, most of the time," she said.

Spellers were required to pronounce the words before and after spelling and were not allowed to go back to correct any mistaken letters once said.

The next round for the spellers will be at the district level bee on Jan. 28 in the Dawson County Middle School auditorium.