The 2005 NH regional Spelling, Vocabulary contests for Indian American children concluded on Saturday, March 26 2005 at the NH Community Technical College in Manchester, NH. The Math and Essay contests were held earlier on Saturday March 19 2005. North South Foundation (NSF) Manchester and the Indian Association of New Hampshire (IANH) organized the event. The event saw a record turnout this year with as many as 135 children participating across all the contests.

The Math Bee contests, which took place on Saturday March 19, were divided into three levels by age groups. The contests were held in multiple-choice format of twenty questions. The Essay Bee followed the Math Bee for Junior and Intermediate levels, also divided according to age groups. The essay contests were introduced this year that will help participants to develop writing skills.

The Spelling and Vocabulary Bee contests, which took place on Saturday, Mar 26, were divided into two main categories by age groups, the Junior and Senior. Each such contest had two phases, Phase I and Phase II, wherein the nature of the task progressed from the written to the oral. Scores for participants were totaled over the two phases. The final event, which took place in the post-lunch Phase II, was the oral spelling bee in which participants were required to verbally spell out the word pronounced by the announcer.

The proceedings began at about 9am with a cheerful crowd of enthusiastic children and their encouraging, anxious parents. Various teams of volunteers managed the different events that took place in parallel in the different rooms of the venue. The event ran till about 3 pm after which the participants and winners were felicitated in a well-attended ceremony, with all children being awarded participation certificates and medals, which was a source of great joy to the children. The winners in individual categories were congratulated by the organizers and handed their winning certificates.

Dr. Anam Govardhan, Professor of English at the Western Connecticut State University, acted as the chief guest. He provided a brief but entertaining and knowledgeable account of the history of the English language, its many influences and how understanding some basic patterns of the language would help anyone learn spellings easier instead of having to learn them by rote. He also had a frank and friendly piece of advice to the Indian-American parents of the children, asking them to take stock of their own facility with English and make the effort to spruce up their pronunciations and accents.

The following is the list of winners in the various events and age groups:

Junior Spelling Bee: 1^st Kasyap Tenneti, 2^nd Anjithaa Radakrishnan, and 3rd Pragnya Iyengar

Senior Spelling Bee: 1^st Vaibhav Shrishail, 2^nd Asish Andhavaraju, 3rd Nishant Annu

Junior Vocabulary Bee: 1^st Mayank Dubey, 2^nd Lasya Thilagar 3^rd Nishant Annu

Math Bee Level-I: 1^st Pragnya Iyengar, 2^nd Rajeev Rohit and Akash Purohit, 3^rd Mugil Kathiravan

Math Bee Level-II: 1^st Mayank Dubey, 2^nd Nikita Kodali and Sanya Shah, 3^rd Sanip Desai and Govindaraj Muthukrishna

Math Bee Level-III: 1^st Arjun Venkatachalam, 2^nd Lasya Thilagar

All proceeds from this event go to the North South Foundation, which provides scholarships for needy children in India.

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