Heritage Quiz

It is with great humility and warmth that we speak of our nation and of the patriots who made it what it is today.  It is with even more profound sentiments that we teach our children and students to do the same.  It is with this thought in mind that the annual theme, India, was decided upon.  In keeping with this annual theme, the Orchid School was most recently the setting for an inter house quiz competition which lauded and valued knowledge of the country with the richest cultural history – our very own motherland, India.

The Heritage Quiz was an inter house competition held in two phases.  The semi-finals had all of our young scholars answering a pen-and-paper test based on the past, present and future of India and related to everything from mythological characters to technological advances.  On the basis of these results, two students were selected to represent each house – Unnati, Ujala, Umang and Udaan – at the junior level and at the senior level, leading to a group of finalists consisting of 8 students.

The Junior Quiz  ( Class VI and VII)

1^st place:   Umang (represented by Aruneema Deshmukh and Sanchita Iyer) – 130 points

2^nd place:  Unnati (represented by Vishal Prasad and Bhavya Kabade) – 85 points

3^rd place:  Udaan (represented by Atharva Chandwadkar and Rahul) – 60 points

4^th place:  Ujaala (represented by Gautam Marathe and Devesh M Chauhan) -15 points

In a quiz spread over 4 rounds that saw team Udaan, with team Umang storm into the lead after the first round, it was eventually a consistent performance by Team Umang that saw them pip the other three teams to the post. Team Umang shone through the middle portion of the quiz and consistently kept pulling some brilliant answers out of the bag (Diwan e Aam, Kalapani jail,correctly identifying the Bihu festival in Assam) to establish some sort of cushion over their nearest rivals going into the final round team. With the final round offering a large number of points for the taking, the other teams though were still in with a chance and though they tried their level best team Umang continued their rock solid performance to consolidate their lead even further and ensure that they won a comfortable victory. Team Unnati made a spectacular late surge to ensure that they beat early leaders team Udaan to second place by a slender margin.

The Senior Quiz (Classes VIII and IX)

1^st place: Unnati (represented by Shantanu Kapale and Karunya Baskar)- 200 points

2^nd place: Udaan (represented by Shriya Datye and Viraj Kelkar)- 100 points * ( winners on tiebreakers) 

3^rd place: Ujaala (represented by Roshan and Rahul Srivastava)- 100 points

4^th place:  Umang  (represented by Ajit kadam and Nikhil.B.S)- .50 points

Like the junior edition of the quiz, the senior quiz too saw action spread across 4 rounds of quizzing. And after the first written round, teams Udaan and Unnati were off to flying starts with 50 points apiece having successfully claimed bonus points for achieving a perfect score for the round that put them miles ahead of the other two teams.  However Round 2 saw Team Unnati in staggering form as they reeled off answer after answer to thoroughly dominate proceedings and establish a lead that they did not give up till the end. After another written round, the final round of the quiz saw teams Udaan and Ujaala battling it out for second place as Team Unnati continued to dominate proceedings. While team Ujaala rallied to make a brilliant comeback in the final round and catch upto team Udaan, team Unnati continued to steamroll any questions that came their way and powered their way into first place. Team Ujaala could consider themselves slightly unlucky to have eventually lost out on the tie breakers to team Udaan, whose consistent showing throughout the quiz was rewarded with second place.

The quiz used a multiple of visual, literary and oral material, and was child-centric with engaging questions geared to the age groups of the respondents.  Opportunities to answer queries were not restricted to the finalists, however.  Once all the finalists had been given the chance to answer a question, it was passed on to the audience – provided that none of the houses succeeded in answering it correctly first!  Such planning and flexibility in the quiz condition not only kept the participants and the audience in silence, but also ensured that the silence was one of attention and acute concentration.

The Heritage India quiz for the year 2011 was set and conducted by three software professionals J Ramanand, B Harishkumar and Suraj Menon Ramanand, Suraj and Harish, who have a shared passion for quizzing and the use of quizzes to developing knowledge bases of young minds.  It is thanks to the initiative and originality of such individuals to work on a novel way of rousing young minds.