One school pupil is set to receive a Dh500,000 ($136,129) cash prize as the winner of the Arab Reading Challenge on Monday.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, will attend the awards ceremony, which will crown the winner of the fifth competition from among five finalists.
The Arab Reading champion will be selected based on the pupil's ability to articulate general knowledge, their critical thinking and communication skills, plus the diversity of books they selected.
The event will also feature the announcement of the Outstanding Supervisor and Best School awards, with winners claiming Dh300,000 and Dh1 million respectively.
Book-loving pupils are required to read and summarise 50 books to qualify for the challenge.
Children are evaluated at class and school level in countries, then by educational district, until eventually 10 pupils are chosen from each country around the world. The national winners are then chosen from that group, and the champion selected from those individuals.
A growing challenge
This year's competition attracted 21 million participants, the highest number in the challenge’s history, from 52 countries, including 14 Arab and 38 foreign countries with an Arab diaspora.
This is compared to 13.5 million participants from 49 countries in 2019.
It also drew 120,000 supervisors, who helped pupils to improve their reading and summarising skills, compared to 99,000 supervisors in the fourth edition, while 96,000 schools joined this year’s challenge compared to 67,000 last time.
The Best School will be selected based on the ability to create a nurturing and supportive environment to encourage students to read, and the efforts made to foster the reading habit among students.
The Outstanding Supervisor award will be given based on efforts made to support students and guide them to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Organised by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, the Arab Reading Challenge aims to create a knowledge movement to bring together millions of Arab readers from across the world, and to nurture an enlightened generation capable of building better Arab societies.
Viewers will be able to watch the announcement on the MBC Channel at 8.30pm UAE time on September 20.
2019's Arab Reading Challenge winners - in pictures
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How to turn your property into a holiday home
- Ensure decoration and styling – and portal photography – quality is high to achieve maximum rates.
- Research equivalent Airbnb homes in your location to ensure competitiveness.
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Top tips
Create and maintain a strong bond between yourself and your child, through sensitivity, responsiveness, touch, talk and play. “The bond you have with your kids is the blueprint for the relationships they will have later on in life,” says Dr Sarah Rasmi, a psychologist.
Set a good example. Practise what you preach, so if you want to raise kind children, they need to see you being kind and hear you explaining to them what kindness is. So, “narrate your behaviour”.
Praise the positive rather than focusing on the negative. Catch them when they’re being good and acknowledge it.
Show empathy towards your child’s needs as well as your own. Take care of yourself so that you can be calm, loving and respectful, rather than angry and frustrated.
Be open to communication, goal-setting and problem-solving, says Dr Thoraiya Kanafani. “It is important to recognise that there is a fine line between positive parenting and becoming parents who overanalyse their children and provide more emotional context than what is in the child’s emotional development to understand.”
Studying addiction
This month, Dubai Medical College launched the Middle East’s first master's programme in addiction science.
Together with the Erada Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation, the college offers a two-year master’s course as well as a one-year diploma in the same subject.
The move was announced earlier this year and is part of a new drive to combat drug abuse and increase the region’s capacity for treating drug addiction.
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- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
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