Tamale Girl Wins National Spelling Bee

Nadia Mashoud Chalpang

A Class Six girl, Nadia Mashoud Chalpang, of the Gbanzaba Memorial School in Tamale, has won this year’s National Spelling Bee in Kumasi.

This is the first time that a pupil from Tamale has won the competition.

The Founder of Gbanzaba Memorial School, Mrs. Janet R.I. Alhassan, is the wife of the late Lawyer R.I. Alhassan.

The school which used to be housed in the founder’s residence moved to its present location at Airport Ridge in Tamale in 1996.

From its modest beginning, the products of the school have excelled in various tertiary institutions in the country and beyond.

One of the pupils of the school, Nadia Jalaludeen, has won a prize for emerging as the best in the maiden vocabulary contest. She is picking an all-expense-paid trip to South Africa and back for her brilliance.

Congratulations continue to pour in to the founder and staff of the school. One of the teachers, Mariama Alhassan, pointed at the efforts teachers put in to encourage the pupils to imbibe the reading culture as one of the factors for the success story of the school.

“From KG 1 to 2, kids go through a regimen of reading every morning till the third year,” one of the teachers said, adding “during their fourth year, they are introduced to patronising the library,” she added.

By A.R. Gomda