interview
`Young contestants
Margarithe Mayes
YOUNG ACHIEVERS Students of the British School of Bahrain (BSB) will be taking part in the Global Round of the World Scholar’s Cup (WSC) in Thailand, in June. Margarithe Mayes, head of English at BSB, tells Muna Yousef more about the competition.
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SC is a competition founded by Daniel Berdichevsky in 2007 that has been steadily gaining momentum. Regionals are held across the globe, followed by a Global Round culminating in the Championship Tournament at Yale University later in the year. Each stage has four team-rounds. The Scholar’s Challenge is a multiple choice question test. The collaborative writing round is a written debate in which youngsters select one out of six statements and argue either for or against it. Each child in a three-person team must select a different topic. The first 30 minutes are used to prepare with teammates; the students then have one hour to compose their essays alone, followed by 15 more minutes to work together. In team debate, the children are given 15 minutes to research their arguments and then debate three times for four minutes, while in the Scholar’s Bowl every team has a clicker and must answer questions that get harder and harder before time runs out. Shouting out the wrong answers to mislead the opposition is considered strategy! The entire competition is based on subject areas which are known in advance. Questions, recommended readings and movies are put on the WSC website to get the children thinking. Some of the topics this year are disease and 58 March 2016
public health and words to light the darkness. There are two divisions: junior, for those up to 15 and senior, for those aged 15 and above. The students decide how to prepare and can even form teams with participants from other schools. “The competition is run so smoothly that it makes you want to do it again. It captured the children’s attention from the word go and kept it right through,” says Margarithe. “There is no other competition like it! It emphasises the growth and learning of the children. It is not about winning or losing and every child walks away at the end of the day with an Alpaca, the competition’s mascot. “It involves applying skills and knowledge across a range of subjects rather than memorisation. It expands their field of view into new areas like crime and justice. The children had to consider things they might not have before, like what are the types of crime, and also look at some famous criminals like Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde. “They learn responsibility and teamwork, debating and people skills. They meet and interact with children from other schools and, especially at the Global Round, from different countries. They have to use various resources to get information and critically think to answer questions. It builds confidence and improves their command of English as a language, since
they are constantly surrounded by it. “The Global Round with 3,000 children taking part will have harder questions and fiercer competition, but even the children who were nervous before the Bahrain regional now know what to expect and are so excited about it. Although the excitement probably does in part have to do with travelling. This year BSB had the third-largest number of students in Bahrain taking part with 49 out of 51 students qualifying for the Global Round. “Older children who had participated before gave their juniors advice on what not to do, such as focusing on a single area, but the children qualified because they persevered, read up on articles, practised debate and decided to do their best.” Among the many prizes to be won, Daniel White, a junior student, won the DaVinci award, a peculiar sounding accolade that makes you think of art or movies, but, is actually for the highest scoring children across all events who did not win an individual or team medal. The advice Margarithe would give youngsters is: “If you want to broaden your horizons and outlook on life; if you want to see what life is like outside of what you know it as, take part in the competition. You learn about things you never would otherwise, meet all sorts of people and you have fun!” www.bahrainthismonth.com