Spelling Contest: A Novel Approach

On September 19th, our association, the Past Pupils’ Association of St. Michael’s College, displayed a spectacular event at Best Western Primrose Hotel. Unlike any of our events in the past, this event was an initiative on our part to reciprocate to the community that has been supporting us since the beginning. For the first time ever, we held a Spelling Contest for children from our community.

The contest was held for four different age groups: Lower Primary (age 6 to 7), Upper Primary (age 8 to 10), Elementary (age 11 to 13), and Secondary (age 14 to 16). In total, almost thirty contestants took part in the contest. Almost two hundred guests were present in the audience, including the parents of the contestants.

The event started at about 11 am and went on till 3 pm. The contestants were very well prepared for this spelling contest. This was evident as many rounds went by without anyone being eliminated. The judges were sweating to select the winners in each round as the competition was fierce. Since the tested words were chosen from the list given to the contestants beforehand, every contestant knew what they were getting into and they spelled each word in a blink of an eye. As a result, except for the lower primary, the judges had to resort to challenging words, which were not in the preparatory study guide, in order to select the winners in each group.

Our association is proud to announce the winners of Spelling Contest 2009. Below are the names of the winners in each group:

For Lower Primary Group:
            First Place - Kavina Uthayakumaran
            Second Place - Shajan Kamalanathan
            Third Place – Heshanth Rasalingam

For Upper Primary Group:
            First Place – Agash Josuwa, Anthiah Rajendran, & Shyanthana Varathan
           
For Elementary Group:
            First Place – Rene Vettivelu & Arun Joshua
            Runner Up – Soumiya Suresh

For Secondary Group:
            First Place – Brandon Velichore
            Runner Up – Malesa Amalanthan
          

 
This event turned out to be very successful as it received much appreciation from the parents and others. During the contest, the audience got more interested as some parents raised concerns in the judgment for one particular group. Though this contest was a pioneering approach on our part, our judges did a fabulous job in all fairness. They delicately resolved whatever issues or stumble blocks they faced and everyone was happy at the end. Much of our appreciation goes to our judges Priya Ganeshamoorthy, Gabriella Adiwinata, Iniyal Inparajah, and Dharmini Thirukumaran. As the judges are teachers in Canadian schools, their experience and expertise with children became very handy in many occurrences.

Our committee members worked so hard, day and night, to make this event possible. They took extra effort to advertise this event in various ways. Our sincere gratitude goes to the organizers of “Singing Fish Picnic” for allowing us to display our posters and to make announcements regarding this contest two weeks before the contest.
We hope to continue holding this spelling contest in the years to come as many people have requested us already!

Amirthamshan Murugesapillai
Editor