The students of GIIS Tokyo performed brilliantly well at the World Scholar's Cup event - Tokyo Round 2019, which took place at the Ichikawa Junior and Senior School in Chiba in May 2019. The school won a total of 57 medals, comprising of 23 Silver and 34 Gold.

Overall a total of 500 students from 76 schools from Tokyo, Chiba and Gunma prefectures participated in the competition.

GIIS Tokyo was represented by 4 teams comprising of 12 students (3 each) from Grades 8-10 with 3 teams in the Seniors and 1 in Juniors Category.

The World Scholar’s Cup is an international academic competition inspired by contests like the ‘Academic Decathlon’. It gives the opportunity to students from around the world to compete in a variety of challenges. The competition challenges students’ academic goals and makes them work towards achieving higher goals.

This was the Regional round of the competition that selects students from various schools in Tokyo to participate in the final round. The Regional round is followed by a Global Round and a Tournament of Champions which is held each year at the Yale University.

In the regional round, the Scholars take part in four key events over two days; Collaborative Writing, Debating, Scholar’s Challenge and the Scholar’s Bowl. This year’s annual theme for the Regional round was - ‘A World on the Margins’, and six subjects were created surrounding this theme.

In the debating event, each team debated on three separate motions. Afterwards, the teams gave each other constructive feedback on how to improve. During the course of the debates, the judges identified outstanding speakers and they were given a chance to compete in the Debate Showcase on the last day. This year, Siya Deshpande, of Grade 10A was chosen to debate along with 8 top speakers selected out of the 500 participants. Siya spoke confidently in front of an audience comprising 700.

In the Collaborative Writing event, the students were given the option of choosing a prompt and writing an argumentative essay on the topic. The teams brainstormed on the thought-provoking prompts and then each student came up with his or her own essay. The prompts motivated students to think out of the box.

The competition at GIIS Tokyo was initiated by Ms Aditi Patki, and duly supported and executed by Ms Kavita Patil and Ms Sumedha Deshpande. Without their guidance, the school’s scholars would have lacked direction and advice, since it was the first time the school participated in the event.

The teachers put in a lot of effort to prepare the students to meet the rigorous challenges which are part of the World Scholar's Cup Regional selection process. The dedicated teacher volunteers went the extra mile to assist the students in giving their best. Teacher volunteers stayed back after school and helped the students in researching material on various topics. Google classroom was helpful for the students to read articles and guiding materials posted by the respective teachers and to interact with each other and the teachers.

GIIS Tokyo witnessed the benefits of hard work and everyone felt proud as the students enthusiastically collected countless medals. Overall, the event was very exciting, exhilarating, and boosted students’ confidence.