Eleven-year-old V. Pavan Sakthivel of Kumalankuttai in Erode city, a student in level VII at Isha Home School, Velliangiri, has always been at ease excelling in thinking games.
Recently, he notched up a perfect score performance in the 2015 National Tournament of Academic Games League of America (AGLOA) at Orlando, USA. For the kid who had won the ‘Math Genius’ abacus exam consecutively for two years at State-level while in third and fourth levels, and also the national-level title in ‘Ideal Play Abacus’ in level four, academic achievements are not new.
Yet, the AGLOA tournament endowed additional significance to the recognitions he had won – winner’s medal for top-notch performance in an individual game and a seventh prize in a group game. He was the only kid from India to win the recognition in the Elementary Division of the academic games that drew participation of 1,000 peers from around the globe. In fact, IHS is the first Indian institution to compete in the 2015 National AGLOA Tournament, the golden jubilee year of the non profit organisation’s service in developing thinking skills of children.
Pavan was at ease in Wff'n Proof (Well Formed Formulas and Proof) fending off his competitors in the chess-like game played with Mathematical , to score a full 24 points. Pavan owes the performance to sustained training at his school where, he says, Academic Games is deemed a learning tool to gain mastery in Mathematics, Language Arts and Logic.
The school had fielded three teams: two for Elementary Division and one for Middle Division, for the Tournament that tested skills of students in Equations, on-sets, WFF-N-proof, linguistics, propaganda, presidents and world events. In Linguistics game, Pavan shared the recognition with his group members Ruhan, Manoo, Vivetha and Shriram. A week back, Pavan and his doctor parents Vijayakumar and Saraswathy were felicitated.
