Fun learning: Inter-school scrabble tournament begins

More than 60 contestants from 16 schools are participating in the event.

LAHORE:

An inter-school scrabble tournament kicked off on Thursday providing participants with an opportunity to learn and have fun together.

More than 60 contestants from 16 schools in Lahore participated in the activity organised by Teen Times – an infotainment magazine of the Jahangir Group of Publications – in collaboration with FatBurger.

Teen Times say the event at FatBurger’s MM Alam Road outlet is the first of its kind in the city.

The tournament is the brainchild of Teen Times chief editor Adeel Niaz.

“Similar events are held in Karachi offering children a chance to learn and have fun together,” Niaz said.

He said the tournament mostly targeted children in the 13-15 age bracket. He said although the response from schools was overwhelming, there were certain difficulties as well.

“Some schools are just not receptive to the idea… the aim is to introduce a world of learning to children this generation is not familiar with. A good way to do this is with board games,” Niaz said.

“The idea was to engage students in a co-curricular activity and encourage learning with fun.

The corporate sector has a role to play in all aspects of society, including education,” said Shahrukh Hashmi, the marketing manager at FatBurger.

Rafay Shamsi and Rayyan Adeel, eight graders at Aitchison College, were happy with their win. However, they seemed nervous about their next match.

What stood out as the most enjoyable bit for Rafay was that they were playing with other children.

“Unlike the computer version of scrabble, here you are playing against children of your age. This board game version gives us a fairer chance at the game itself.”

Similar views were shared by the grade 8 team from the Lahore College of Arts and Sciences. The girls from LACAS found the board game far more fun.

“It was great to see the expressions on your opponent’s face… even their attempts at trying to build words,” said Sania Athar from the LACAS.

But the key to winning, according to Momina Asif of the same team, was vocabulary and spellings.

For Iqra Saeeed of the National Grammar School, the tournament offered students a chance to engage with other children from different schools.

“It is fun to see teams engaging with one another,” she said.

The games were refereed by teachers from the competing schools. The contesting teams were given an hour to play the board game. Thus bringing teams from Beaconhouse Newlands, teacher Huda Imtiaz refereed a game between two other schools.

Imtiaz said the activity had brought out the competitive side of children.

“Surprisingly, most of the students were not that good at their spellings. Perhaps this is why we need more such activities,” she said while speaking at the end of the first day of the tournament.

The tournament will continue till Saturday. The organisers say they hope to take the tournament to other cities and introduce quiz competitions and chess tournaments.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2014.