The finals of the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee takes place May 26, 2016. Here's is how to watch it on TV and the live stream.
The finals of the 89th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee will take place Thursday during two separate rounds.
Two New Jersey students were among the 45 who will compete for a $40,000 prize and other awards, down from the 284 students who initially entered the bee.
Each student will be eliminated after misspelling a word. The last two years, two students were declared co-champions.
The finals start 10 a.m. EST on Thursday, May 26 and stop at 2 p.m. This round will televised on ESPN2 and also streamed online on ESPN2.
The last round will continue at 8 p.m. EST on Thursday, May 26 on ESPN and streamed online on ESPN.
You can also follow along on social media using the hashtag #spellingbee.
Here are the remaining N.J. spellers.
The two New Jersey students are 13-year-old Rimas Chacar-Palubinskas, an eighth grader at Ho-Ho-Kus Public School, and 10-year-old Shruthika Padhy, a fifth grader at Bret Harte Elementary School in Cherry Hill.
Both contestants correctly spelled the words they were given on stage during the two rounds on Wednesday, then qualified due to their scores on the preliminary written test given Thursday.
Three other contestants representing New Jersey also got their two spelling words correct, but did not score high enough on the written test, while two students were eliminated in the second round when they misspelled their words.
Last year, Katharine S. Wang of Morristown was the only New Jersey student who reached the semifinals last year, her fourth trip to the bee. She then misspelled cinqueciento, a term referring to the 16th century Italian Renaissance.
The last resident from the state to win the bee was 13-year-old Katharine Close of Spring Lake in 2006, who correctly spelled ursprache, a language reconstructed from languages that came later.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook