SCRABBLE
GALA 2012
By
MISS. MAGESWARI MUNUSAMY
The Gala was long in the
waiting, a maiden venture by Scholar’s Scrabble Club. The students of Sg Pelek
who form the main bulk of the club members, have been taking part in
competitions held in cosmopolitan areas such as Subang Jaya and Petaling Jaya.
They gained precious experience playing the game with established and
distinguished players in the Scrabble arena. Beginning as ‘country bumpkins’,
the Sg Pelek youngsters learnt to be quiet, courteous and alert, taking a cue
from their inimitable peers. And it was time to battle it out in the homefront
with MSA’s help. The support given by the Malaysian Scrabble Association was
invaluable as SSC is still considered a yearling.
Suffice to say, the Gala was a
blast. The Sg Pelekian youngsters came in full force. The eager beavers renewed
the organiser’s vigour to make the Gala a success. The master’s category
players, Vanitha Balasingham, Alex Tan, Ramaraj Sundraraj, Vinnith Ramamurthi,
to name a few, graced the event. There were only eight players but they are heavyweight
players who came to give support. In the intermediate category, the response
was heartwarming. The youngsters with growing experience gave their best and Yu
Teck Chein emerged the winner, with Priyanka Sethu and Siew Qing Wang coming in
second and third
.
Kudos to the beginners who came
in droves, from 8 players from Pahang, 3 from Negeri Sembilan to a feisty Sri
Lankan student who just moved to Malaysia two weeks ago and he, nine year old
Vignesh Ramanan, was the champion followed by Kok Yun Shung and Saranya
Subramaniam. There was much excitement, almost palpable, from the young ones
because Scrabble was a game they had yet to compete in. The excitement spread
to students from neighbouring schools who were curious about the Gala and the
waves it created in this rustic town since its announcement. The interest
aroused motivated the Sg Pelek community to offer financial assistance and
parents too volunteered their services for any future competitions. Moreover, a
million thanks to the former students of SMK Sungai Pelek who came willingly to
aid the organisers by volunteering to be runners for the Beginner’s Category,
which wasn’t an easy task.
This article is an appreciation
to all those who stood by SSC to lend a helping hand. Hats off to Mr. Sundraraj
for being a real gentleman at heart, and for coordinating the tournament. His
experience benefitted the SSC committee members who will coordinate future tournaments.
His family members tagged along and they were a great help too. The principal
of SMK Sg Pelek, Pn Saimah bt Ahmad, is a visionary woman who backs any
activity that benefits school students. She allowed the SSC to use the school
hall to hold the competition and she also gave away the prizes to the winners.
She was clearly impressed with the effort put in by the committee members who
got the hall ready and Mr. Sundraraj and co. who contributed their expertise in
handling a tournament. Mr. Manharlal Patel, the vice principal and a long-time friend
of Mr Sundraraj, was also a driving force. He showed up even before the gala
started.
All in all, at the end of the
day, everyone heaved a sigh of relief when the gala came to a close. All fears
and anxieties melted away to be filled with pure pleasure, pride and gratitude.
It is both humbling and exhilarating to know that there are strong hands to
provide us with firm support. Thank you to everyone who came for us and we are
sure everyone had a gala time.
SSC’s
SCRABBLE WORKSHOP
by: Vetri Thillagan Gunaseelan
by: Vetri Thillagan Gunaseelan
The
Scholar’s Scrabble Club (SSC) members have successfully organized and launched another
activity on 16th of June, 2012 in SMK Sungai Pelek, Sepang, as per
the aim of SSC; to build a new generation of Scrabblers. With the presence of
our efficient sources of creative ideas, Jivan Subramaniam and the advisors of
SSC, a Scrabble workshop was held for all the primary schools in the Sepang
district, namely SK Sungai Pelek, SK Methodist Sungai Pelek, SRJK (T) Sepang,
SRJK (C) Sepang, SRJK Wah Lian, SRJK (T) Telok Merbau, (…another 2 schools…). The teachers and students from these primary
schools have encouraged and shown a very positive view towards our event.
Around 46 students from these 8 eight schools were present on that day,
escorted by a teacher from every school.
The
event kicked off with the registration session at 7.45a.m. meanwhile the SSC
members were setting things in order. Meanwhile SSC’s Advisor, Mdm.
Kanakalecthumi, Miss Mageswari and Jivan were preparing the Public Address
System (P.A. System) and setting up the arrangements in the hall, the students
and teachers gathered in the Lecture Hall. With their cooperation, the
registration session was over in about half an hour. Though the President of
SSC, Ravienthran had a tight schedule to show up in the event, he did manage to
sacrifice some of his precious time to supervise the team. After signing the
certificates of participation, he excused himself and made a move.
At
about 8.30a.m., Jivan began his session of the day. The students were
introduced to the gadgets used in a Scrabble game such as tiles, tile bag, tile
rack, digital clock and various types of Scrabble board. Step by step, he
taught them how to play and form words out of the tiles on the rack. The
students portrayed a positive feedback when Jivan questioned and quizzed them. Jivan
caught their attention by showing them a row of letters (R E I N S A T) and
asked them to make words out of it. They were never like beginners when they
voiced out their answers; they managed to form many words from it. We were able
to sense the enthusiasm of the students in Scrabble with their expression and
energetic tone, moreover when SSC’s Secretary, Geetha Maniam was capturing
their photographs. Jivan also stressed how to play a clean game without any
rule-breaking.
Jivan
ended his session at 9.45a.m.. Geetha and Vetri Thillagan Gunaseelan took
charge of giving out the breakfast for the students and teachers. Meanwhile, the
rest of the members confirmed the arrangements of the Scrabble boards in the
hall are in order, for the next session. The break time ended at 10.15a.m. and
they orderly made their way to the hall. The cleanliness of the area was kept
in good condition.
In
the hall, Jeihiin Subramaniam carried out his session – playing session. We
distributed the score sheets and double-letter word list to the novices. Then,
the playing session began. The teachers walked around helping their children to
form words out of their row of tiles. Some of the students had their opponents
from different school. Not only students, but teachers, too were intermingling
with students from other schools; correcting and helping them when they struggled.
Undeniable, most of them were so new playing this board game, thus playing
lukewarmly. But, some lightning-brain students were able to conquer the
techniques of this game rapidly. A student by the name of Aisha from SK Sungai
Pelek started the game by playing WANTED for 28 points. She learnt by herself
that by placing the 4points letter (W) on the ‘double letter score’ with the
word overlapping a ‘double word score’ would earn her a high score. Besides,
two other students from SRJK Wah Lian and SK Methodist Sungai Pelek played the
bingos GOLDERS and MANGOLD for 68 and 74 points, respectively.
The playing session came to an end at about
12.15p.m., 15minutes before the workshop officially ends. Mdm. Kanaka
introduced the Chief Advisor of SSC, Mr. Bathmanaban. Then, the prices as well
as the quality of the Scrabble boards were explained, mainly converged to the
teachers. The certificates signed by both, the Chief Advisor and the President
were presented to the teachers on behalf of their students. This workshop has
successfully ended at 12.30p.m. as planned in the schedule.
Last
but not the least, a bunch of compliments and appreciation is paid not only to
the committee members of SSC, but also to the students and teachers of SMK
Sungai Pelek for their kind assistance in organizing the event. With their help
and concern, things had turned out flawlessly making the event a successful
one.
CHARITY PROGRAM BY SCHOLAR’S SCRABBLE CLUB
Prepared by: G.
VetriThillagan
A charity program for the Scrabble newbies, as the
second event organized by the Scholar’s Scrabble Club (SSC) in the year 2012
was held atPERSATUAN BEKAS PELAJAR SJK(T) SEPANG. This
magnificent idea was suggested by Mdm. KanakaletchumiKulandasamy, the advisor
of SSC. The charity program managed to witness around 30 teenage students from
Sungai Pelek town and other peripheral areas. Most of them hardly had any
experience in Scrabble, and it did give us an immense challenge to expose them
to Scrabble in two and a half hours. Once all the trainers in-charge namely, JivanSubramaniam,
the President, JeihiinSubramaniam, who was the recent champion of CNY 2012,
KogaanSelvaraja, Geetha Maniam, Prema Maniam, Arunan Sethu and myself,
VetriThillaganGunaseelan were there, the advisors and other supporting teachers
gathered the students in a classroom to begin the session. We, as trainers
split ourselves into 2 teams as there were 2 different classes of students.
Prema, Geetha and I were with Mdm. Kanaka in one classroom, where as the rest
took over the other classroom.
Firstly, the students were simply
briefed on the gadgets used such as the Scrabble board, tiles, tile bag and the
rack. As soon as the students were clear with the names of the gadgets, Mdm.
Kanakaletchumihad begun the next session; how to play Scrabble. The Secretary
of the club, Geetha suggested to Mdm. Kanaka that the students should
understand the playing manner thoroughly before knowing how to score as well as
calculating it. Mdm. Kanaka randomly drew seven tiles from the tile bag. Then,
we showed them how to form a word from the tiles arranged on the rack. Some of
the students showed positive interest by sharing some of the words that could
be formed. Geetha was helping Mdm. Kanaka with her demonstration whereas Prema
and I were managing their discipline. The students were quite easy to be
controlled and managed as they were disciplined and polite indeed. We carried
out the session for about 45 minutes.
The next session – playing session –
were conducted by us, trainers. We paired the students randomly, and provided
them with a Scrabble board, a tile bag and two racks. We asked them to arrange
the tiles on the board in 10 x 10 and explained to them it was a systematic
method to count all 100 tiles. We aided them at first as they were not so able
to play. Most of the students had a problem in placing the second and following
words. The words were overlapping with the other words, as if forming
double-letter words as well. Hence, we taught them how to form one word at a
time. At times, they formed a word attached to the beginning or the end of
another word. For example, one of the students placed the word “GREAT” at the
end of the word “DOG” forming a non-existing word “DOGGREAT”. Therefore, I
briefed the student on the rules of forming a word. This session prolonged till
10.30p.m. where the students were asked to recount the tiles and place it in
the bag carefully.
We gathered the students from both the
classes in a room. The supporting teachers and other advisors gave a closing
speech and an appreciative talk on their attitudes, voluntary involvement of
the trainers in this charity and the further sectors for the students to
succeed. All of us dismissed about 15minutes later.
