A-W-E-S-O-M-E.
Did you know there are competitive middle school Scrabble teams? I didn’t either, but now I do, thanks to Stefan Fatsis. Stefan is a sports journalist whose book about competitive Scrabble, Word Freak, is marvelously engaging, and he coaches school Scrabble in D.C. I’m going to help him when the school year starts up again, and I couldn’t be more excited. This is the longest stretch of my life I haven’t done some sort of work directly with (other people’s) children, and while my current volunteer work as a cooking school assistant is gustatorially rewarding, I am excited to get back into that other type of school.
Does a school you cover have a Scrabble team? Not that I am totally biased or anything—but I think that might make a nice feature story.
Does a school you cover have a Scrabble team? Not that I am totally biased or anything—but I think that might make a nice feature story.
posted by Linda Perlstein at
6:55 PM
7 Comments:
in 1960s used to play competitive Scrabble at Cafe Figaro in Village. Used Funk & Wagnell's. It had 69 two letter words and 370+ 3 letter words, and with that crew, you needed to know them all. Example: in one game I got 212 points on a single play, but lost the game because my opponent bingo'd (all 7 letters) 5 times during the game. Oh well . . .
I knew a French teacher who would have her students play the French version - she claimed it really improved their vocabularies.
Sometimes I see really great French words on my rack and get bummed I can't use them.
Same for me on seeing the French words. But my daughter never has that problem: She's studying Chinese!
I've been surprised at how kids age 10, 12, or so, can really step up to the plate in Scrabble. Scrabble has always been a big game with my family. My nephew plays with his Dad. His Dad doesn't have any mercy on him and will beat him by a long shot if he gets the right plays. But it doesn't bother my nephew. The competition spurs him to come up with some really great plays himself, even if he doesn't win. Even my younger nephews or nieces at age 6 or 7 could enjoy the game, with a few suggestions now and then for how to use their letters.
Mary Ann Zehr
That's interesting! A skill you can use in the "real world," too. :)
Watched this Scrabble related video a little while ago. Very cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aq6sJEuVU&feature=player_embedded
What a fabulous idea. Will look into covering Scrabble in schools in our magazine, School Library Journal.
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