Identifying and motivating the Lingua-Holics

In line with the vision of Atmiya Vidya Mandir, which is to provide an environment to create keen competition amongst the students, all the children of the school are divided into four houses. Every week the students of these houses compete against each other in either a sports competition or an academic competition.

This year’s academic competition kicked off on Saturday the 23rd of July 2011. The English department of Atmiya Vidya Mandir did the honours by conducting an English competition with participants comprising from first standard to tenth standard. The competition was organized to enthuse in the students the love for the English language. This event took place in the prayer hall from 11.45 am to 1.30 pm.

Each house - Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram and Suhradam, had 20 participants from standard 1st to 10th. The participants were divided into three levels i.e. first level included students from first standard to fourth standard, second level included students from fifth standard to seventh standard and third level included students from eighth standard to tenth standard. Each round included all the three levels of students.

• First round was the Spell Bee round and was designed and hosted by Renuka Madam. In this round the participants in a fixed time limit had to spell as many words as they could correctly.
• The second round was a Creative Reading round which was designed and hosted by Ruma Madam. The purpose of this round was to invoke in the students the importance of reading that included correct pronunciation, intonation, modulation and expression of the mood of the content in a creative way.
• Third round comprised of Riddle and Tongue Twisters and was designed and hosted by Binu Madam. In this round the participants were asked riddles and in a fixed time limit had to answer the riddle. The tongue twisters were meant for 10th standard students. They had to speak the tongue twister five times clearly without stopping and it was fun listening to the students with their twisted tongues.
• The fourth round was designed and hosted by Paras Sir; the motive behind this round was to help the students get better at sentence structuring and had jumbled–sentences. The participants needed to frame the five set of jumbled words into sentences.
• The fifth round was about the listening and comprehension component of the language and was designed and hosted by Seema Madam, where in the participants listened to a passage and filled up the questionnaire based on the audio within a limited time frame.
• The sixth and final round comprised of videos portraying values for living life which was designed and hosted by Saumya Madam. The participants had to identify the value after watching the video.

After each question being answered correctly the house members of their respective houses jumped with joy and clapped and motivated their house members on the stage. The spirit for the team and the environment of positive competition was visible to all enjoying the competition.

The judges Rupashree Madam and Kshitij Sir were also very excited and they kept the students motivated by their consistent words of praise and applaud. Shivam house scored the highest by bagging 744 points. Suharadam house scored 655 points and held the second position. The Sundaram house and Satyam house scored fairly well bagging 615 and 560 points holding 3rd and 4th position respectively.

The overall competition was hosted by Seema Madam and she brought the audience to their feet by asking them various competition related questions. The students from the audience who answered the questions were aptly awarded with a candy and huge applauds from the teachers and the audience.

By ~
Binu Madam
English Department