Kasturba Gandhi Primary School

One of the prizes that we won in the BIG General Knowledge Quiz was R10,000 worth of books for our school library.

However, we knew about a primary school that had just had a library building donated and needed to stock it so we decided to give our prize to them. Our school works with an organisation called LEARN ‘Let’s Educate A Rainbow Nation” that focuses on helping young children to discover the joys of reading for pleasure and they alerted us to this school.

Only 8% of schools in South Africa have libraries. Can you imagine that? Reading, particularly at primary school age is so important for brain development but there are schools that barely have text books, never mind a selection of recreational books.

The school we chose has a fine history. It was founded by Kasturba Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s wife, when they spent time in Durban between 1893 and 1914. While Mahatma was fighting for civil rights, Kasturba was working with poor children. The school is in the grounds of the home where the Gandhi’s lived in a place called Inanda.

Kasturba Primary lies in the grounds of the Gandhi’s home in Inanda.

We arrived at Kasturba Gandhi Primary at about 10:00am to an enormous welcoming party. As we sat in guest of honour chairs, the school choir performed, followed by an impressive display of traditional dancing. Speeches were made by their Principal, our Principal and other dignitaries. Then we were taken on a tour of the new library where there were cakes which had been baked by parents and teachers.

Surrounded by happy faces at Kasturba Gandhi Primary.

It was a wonderful morning and the children really impressed me with their talents, their discipline and their exemplary behaviour, despite it being a long ceremony and there being so many of them under the care of only a few teachers.

The choir was really impressive.

Travelling back to school, I felt uplifed at the thought of the kids enjoying the books. Kids these days don’t always take to reading right away but with the right story and a bit of encouragement, they can be drawn into the wonderful worlds that books can give them.

Checking out the brand new library building.

BIG General Knowledge Quiz – Quiz Day

Are you aware of the book ‘Diary of a Part-time Indian’ by Sherman Alexie?  It’s a great book about a native American schoolboy who gets to leave his ‘Res’ school and attend a private school on the strength of his basketball talent.  The story explores the tensions between his school life and new friends and his Res life and old friends.  It culminates in the inter-school basketball match between the two schools.  The young protagonist realises how much pride is riding on this match for his community and how his actions will be pivotal to what transpires.

That book always comes back to me when I’m faced with competitions.  In my scenario we are the Res school.  I’m not saying my school is a terrible school but public schools in South Africa do tend to have a bad reputation and it’s this perception that I like to challenge whenever the opportunity arises.

My school would love to win and there’s a lot riding on it for me personally too.  After all, I did push for the school to enter.  I hope that we can at least place highly.

I’ve picked the teams carefully, we’ve prepped as much as we could, the rest is in the hand of fate.

Again the rows of plush buses and fancy cars, only more this time.  The hall is packed and it’s with a sense of deja vu that I start this quiz.

I estimate that the quiz is 20% sports questions so it’s no wonder that boys schools do better.  Nobuhle (not her real name) has got it covered though and we high five whenever a question comes up that we’ve managed to predict. There’s a weird round about cryptic sayings that’s unexpected but not too difficult.

At half time we are fifth out of 50+ teams.  Not bad but not great either.

The second half is better.  There is a literature round – joy!  And there’s a music round.  We have a music specialist and she nails it.  The rest is the usual general knowledge fare with some tough questions.

Okay, I’m not going to draw this out.  We won and much was made of the fact that it was the first time that an all-girl team won.  We got a huge trophy for the school, book vouchers and an ipod each.  I’m hoping each school went away thinking that public schools maybe aren’t that bad after all.

BIG General Knowledge Quiz – Countdown to Quiz Day

Three days before the BIG quiz, we find out that there’s another quiz happening the day before at the same school and with many of the same contestants.  This one is focused on history.    I’m annoyed that my school didn’t know about it and that I only found out through a chance conversation.  I approach the head of history and tell her that I have a team (I don’t) and that we are strong contenders (hubris!) for this competition if she can manage to get us in.  Even as a practice quiz it will be worthwhile and will give me a chance to gauge the competition.

Luckily, she manages to get us entered at the last minute and I rush off, hoping that the girls I have in mind are available.  Two are but one isn’t.  At afternoon registration I stand up in class and ask for anyone who does history and is available to volunteer for a quiz the next evening.  Candice (not her real name) offers and we have a team of four.

Arriving at the venue, it’s apparent how big this competition is.  Rows upon rows of gleaming school buses, emblazoned with the names of elite schools are parked in the lot and along the street.  There’s catering and not just a few tired sandwiches but hot and cold buffet and choices of beverage.   We find our table and sit ready for we know not what.  I see kids from my primary school I haven’t seen for ages.

Then we are underway and the questions are interesting and wide ranging.  There’s a question about Tsar Nicholas II and I’d recently watched a documentary about the Romanovs so that’s lucky.  Then there’s a question about where Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and I’ve just read a book about that.  I start to feel like Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire. “D. It is written”   The coincidences are piling up.  Every question seems to have a story connected to me in some way. I don’t mean to imply that I answered every question – it was a team effort but I felt that the odds were definitely in my favour that evening.

At the end of the quiz,  the host school was in second place and we had won!  It was the first time that they’d been beaten in the history of the competition we found out later.  One of the boys from the host school asked if we were coming to the BIG Quiz the next day and grimaced when we said we surely were.

One of the best things about  the evening was that my history teacher had come to watch.  At the end of the year he’s retiring after 40 years teaching and said that our win was the nicest retirement gift he could have received.

It’s the real quiz tomorrow and I’m excited.

How do you coach for a General Knowledge Quiz?

I’m often told that it’s impossible to coach for a general knowledge quiz, “You either know it or you don’t.” is the phrase that’s heard most often.  I disagree.  There’s a lot of luck involved certainly, but the harder you work, the luckier you get as someone famous once said.

Here are my tips for preparing for a new quiz.

1. Who generally wins the quiz?

If the quiz has a history, you can look up the past winners and make some assumptions.  In the case of the BIG General Knowledge Quiz, it had only been won by all boy’s schools so I could make the assumption that there would be quite a few sports questions.  So there’s something to start with.

2. Who is the quizmaster?

Who is setting the questions and what are their particular interests?  Again, I discovered that the quizmaster for the BIG Quiz was a history teacher so it’s a fair bet that there will be some history questions in there.

3. Are there past questions or references to the quiz online?

Sometimes there are practice questions that can give you an idea of what to expect.  In this case there were not but there were online references to previous year’s quizzes, questions that were particularly difficult etc..  I can use this information.

4. Past experience and pet questions

If you’ve been in other quizzes, you can get a sense of the kinds of questions that are likely to come up.  Capital cities are a favourite, as are questions about the biggest, deepest, oldest things in the world such as Mt Everest (largest mountain) or Lake Baikal (deepest lake).  I could go on but you get the idea.

5. Fill the gaps in your knowledge

Find out where you are weak as a team and focus on improving.  As a girls school, we were particularly bad at sports questions so that became a specific training area.  Luckily one of the girls offered to take this on as her expert subject.

6. Repeat and Refine

I’d set questions every week.  Questions that went unanswered carried into the next week.  Subject areas that were weak got more questions the next week.  It’s pointless to keep asking questions that everyone knows the answers to (although it’s important to include some to keep spirits up).

7. Read, Read, Read

Read the papers, read magazines, read books, read EVERYTHING!  And when you come across an interesting piece of information that would make a good question, make a note of it immediately.

8. Measure and feedback

Pay attention to who answers what questions.  Remember you’re not only looking for the people who answer most questions, you are looking for people with specific and esoteric knowledge too.  When there’s been progress, comment on it and offer advice, “Your soccer and rugby knowledge is astounding so you might want to work on golf or tennis now.”

9. Have fun!

I’m a very focused person but you have to have room for some laughs.  Some afternoons we laughed so much that we attracted other students who wanted to know if we were having a party.  General knowledge is fun and even though we worked hard, we also bonded as a group and almost forgot about the competition sometimes.

PS: The View From Saturday by E.L Konigsberg is a great kid’s book about a school quiz team. I read it when I was training for the Kids Lit Quiz and it inspired me.

BIG General Knowledge Quiz – Motivation

After the pre-selection quiz I posted the top 15 names up to the notice board, along with the coaching times.  One of the teachers has offered her classroom for the coaching sessions.

I’ve made it clear that the final teams haven’t been selected and that anyone can come along to the coaching sessions. And here, I want to say a little something about selection and motivation.

In my opinion, choosing teams too early can de-motivate rather than motivate.  Those selected tend to rest on their laurels, while those not selected lose hope and drop out.  And again, I’m drawing on my experience with Kids Lit Quiz.    My best friend then, didn’t make a team in either the first or second year of competition but she was determined, attended every single training session and worked her butt off. She made it her personal mission to get on a team for the third and final year. And she made it!  Why? Because one of the team members had made the assumption that they were golden and would be an automatic pick.  While they focused on other stuff, Jessica (not her real name) had made extraordinary progress and easily knocked Golden out of the team that went on to win the entire competition.   MORAL: Never give up because you don’t win immediately and never become complacent in your success.

I’m also refraining from choosing teams because I want to avoid disagreements and resentments.  As soon as the teams are announced, I’m going to have answer questions about the selection process and deal with disappointment and possibly anger from those who didn’t make the cut. Some of these girls are my close friends so that’s going to be awkward.

BIG General Knowledge Quiz – Selection

There aren’t enough quizzes in South Africa.   The few that exist are mostly regional competitions so it’s impossible to become a national quiz champion (except for one which I’ll come to later).  It’s frustrating for a hard-core quizzer like me who will participate in any quiz, any time.  I used to even do pub quizzes until I was banned for being under-age.  It’s not like I was drinking or anything like that, I just wanted to do the quiz.

When I found out about the BIG General Knowledge Quiz I was elated and then depressed to find that my school didn’t participate.  Although regional, it did attract every top private school in the province and had some prestige attached.

I started bugging my teachers about it.  The teachers at my school are very committed to extra-curricular activities.  Every one of them does some after school coaching whether it is sport or debating or extra lessons.  Some do more than one and that, they said, was the problem.  There just weren’t enough resources to take on yet another activity.  “Let me do it.” I implored.  “I’ll find four people, put a team together and do the coaching.”

So it was agreed and I set about recruiting a quiz team.  I got more potential interest than I was expecting.  Word had got out that I was (in my youth) a world quiz champion.  Yes, there is one quiz in South Africa where you can become a national and world champion.  It’s the Kids Lit Quiz, a competition solely about literature that’s aimed at 10 – 13 year olds.  After three years of training, my team and I did win the ultimate level of that competition, one of the best experiences of my life.

On the appointed day, I had around 50 people ready to take a selection test  I’d put together.  Our school could enter two teams, so I had to choose the top eight.

We marked the papers straight away but I took the results home to study.  I knew from the Kids Lit Quiz that putting a team together isn’t as simple as just choosing the top scorers.  You have to have the right mix of subject strengths and try not to overlap knowledge too much.   I spent the weekend studying every paper and by Monday I had 15 possibles to work with.

Let the coaching commence!

Kids Lit Quiz Part 2

Coming back from the quiz, I informed my teacher that our team was going to win the national final next year.  She gently explained that she’d been to a national final once before and it was very different to the regional competition.  For a start, it was buzzer based.  Wayne would start asking a question, beginning with obscure information and moving onto to more obvious clues. The first team to buzz in with the correct answer would win two points. She went on to explain that answering incorrectly loses the team a point so it’s very difficult to judge exactly when to buzz.  “It’s very strategic. The top teams are unbelievably good, it’s a whole new level of competition.”  she said.

It so happened that the national final that year was happening in a city just 40 minutes away.  I suggested that our team should go and watch the national final and find out just how difficult it is.  My teacher thought this was a great idea and organised the trip.

It was as she described.  There were seven rounds of ten questions and the teams were hunched over their buzzers listening intently as the questions unfolded.  There was a whole round just on authors, another on books which had been made into movies. We watched as the scores fluctuated wildly from round to round and the stress started to take its toll on some of the teams.  It was terribly exciting.    Afterwards, my teacher asked me if our team could have won.  “Not this year but we will next year.” I replied.

We changed the focus of our training, incorporating more author biographies and creating questions that were like the ones we’d heard. Our teacher suggested an early morning book club at the school to help us and I started a Friday afternoon training session too.

This time, my teacher asked me for input on the teams and I gave her feedback based on the training sessions so that the team would have a good range of knowledge and the best chance of success.

We won the regional round and used the prize money to book flights to Cape Town for the final.   At the final, we took the lead in the first round and steadily added to our score, only answering when we were sure.   The other teams were forced to take risks to catch up and we saw the damage that negative scoring could do.  At the end, we’d won easily and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with quizmaster, Wayne Mills with the beautiful Table Mountain as a backdrop.  He was telling us all about the amazing things we were going to see and do in New Zealand, venue for the world final that year.

A flurry of training and fund-raising ensued.  Five flights to New Zealand were going to be tough to fund.  Luckily all other expenses in New Zealand would be covered.  In the nick of time, we got the money together, booked the flights and it finally seemed real.

After the longest journey of my life – 24 hours travelling and three years preparing, we arrived at the boarding school in Hamilton which was to be our base for the week.  The teams who had already arrived rushed out to greet us and show us around.  The conversation just flowed and it was like we’d known each other all our lives.

The competition itself was tough.  As three time champion, the UK were expected to win again and we were the rank underdogs. South Africa had never won in the twenty year history of the competition. For the first two rounds, we didn’t answer a single question.  The international teams were a lot quicker off the mark than we were used to.  We decided to take more risks in the third round which was graphic novels and we answered five questions correctly and took the lead. Then we relaxed into our game plan of protecting our lead and not being impulsive.  Luckily we managed to adapt and not lose our cool.

I could write a whole post about New Zealand; the glow-worm caves, the Maori village, the hot springs and the many wonderful authors we met.  But it’s the lively meal times, the late night conversations and the singalongs on the bus that come back to me when I remember this trip.  That and raising the trophy for South Africa!

People ask how it felt and it was a joyous occasion, no doubt, but I’d have to say that winning in Cape Town felt better because it was the start of a journey whereas winning the world final was the end.  We knew that we’d never have the joy of participating in Kids Lit Quiz again, something that had captivated and motivated us for so long.

So that’s why I started coaching the next year’s teams as soon as I got back to South Africa.  It meant I could stay involved and help others to experience the joy that Kids Lit Quiz gave me.

I’ve since passed on the torch and moved on to other projects but Kids Lit Quiz taught me that anything is possible if you want it enough and have the passion to work for it.  It’s been a great lesson and I’ve applied it to many other challenges in my life.

Kids Lit Quiz – Part 1

If I had to name one thing that was a turning point in my life, it was the Kids Lit Quiz.  It taught me to follow my dreams and to dream big.

Kids Lit Quiz was the brainchild of Wayne Mills, from the University of Auckland’s faculty of Education. He was researching why children, specifically boys, tend to lose interest in reading at around age 10. One of the things he’d noticed when his own kids were at school was that junior school prize givings tended to focus on sports and academics but there was never recognition for the good readers. He came up with a quiz format, aimed at 10-13 year olds that would test readers on their general reading habits and piloted it in a few New Zealand schools in 1991.
Today it is a hugely popular annual competition spanning 8 countries and five continents. Thousands of kids compete in local heats for a chance to be selected for a national team. The top team from each country travels to the world final for a chance to be crowned as world champions.

Read more about Kids Lit Quiz here.

I first heard about Kids Lit Quiz in 2009. The grade 5,6 and 7 classes were given a test of 50 questions all about various books. A week later I was given a letter to take home that informed my parents that I’d been selected for one of the two teams that would compete in the Durban regional round.

It was a wonderful afternoon. The hall was full of teams and spectators and the quiz was fast paced and fun. Wayne was there in person, ready to ask us 100 questions in ten categories about books. The categories included, Orphans, Beasts, Mythology even a category called Fruit! The three hours just flew by and we were enthralled by the depth and variety of the questions asked. In between rounds Wayne talked about various books from comics to classics and everything in between. I was thrilled to think that I’d be able to do this again for another two years. I had learned about lots of books I hadn’t read yet and looked forward to finding them.

Over the next year I read as many books as usual but tried to be more varied in my reading tastes. I attempted books I wouldn’t normally choose and found some of my favourite authors that way. I wrote little quizzes and tested my friends, encouraging them to do the same. We’d meet up at weekends to compare notes and try to cover as much ground as possible. We were counting the days until Wayne would return to quiz us again.

We had just as much fun on our second attempt and placed 2nd out of 40 teams but we still had one more chance to try to make the national final the next year. I really, really wanted to win the nationals so that our team could go to the world finals and have a week long reading extravaganza in a foreign country. We’d heard about the previous world finals in Oxford and Edinburgh, the authors the kids had met, the friendships they’d made and the amazing trips they’d taken as part of the experience.

I’d never wanted something so much before.