The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980

Return of the GeoBee

Paige Gilbert jumped up and down with excitement after going a full nine rounds and walking away as the winner of Lincoln School's National Geographic GeoBee. Gilbert bested the rest of the schools 4th through 8th grade students Thursay afternoon in the first geography bee held at the school in several years. Through a total of nine rounds Gilbert correctly answered the most questions that tested the kids' knowledge of subjects ranging from locations of cities to economic activities of countries to animals found around the world.

"I did not expect to win!" the enthusiastic 6th grader said after earning the championship medal.

The GeoBee began with the students divided into two groups that mixed the different grades. Both groups had seven rounds of identical questions. Some rounds gave the students two answers to choose forms, some didn't.

Sixth grade teacher Kathryn Spencer and history teacher Gary Roberson administered the questions, with the help of Melody McDonough and Sara Tams, who tallied the correct answers.

The four highest scorers from each group went on to the finals, although it took three rounds of tie breakers to narrow down Spencer and Tams' group.

In the end, the top three students - Gilbert, Elijah Barnett and Colt Olson - faced off for the school championship.

Olson, who took second, exceeded his own expectations in the contest.

"At first I was like 'a geography bee? What? I don't know what this is. I'm probably gonna fail at it.' Then I got second place!" he said. "My Mom and my Dad are gonna be like 'what the heck?'"

Unfortunately, since the school got on board with the GeoBee late, they missed out on a shot at sending Gilbert to the state championship, which took place the same day as Lincoln's event.

"Usually you would have done this by March 1," Spencer said, adding that they had to do some unauthorized ad-libbing on the questions, which wouldn't have been allowed had it been part of the regular competitions.

According to the GeoBee website, school winners take a test to qualify for the state GeoBee, and State winners then go on to a National Championship in Washington D.C. in May.

"I would like to do it again next year, now that we've kind of had a practice year bringing it back. I figured out some kinks we need to fix," Spencer said.

One of the surprises from the match was that it was younger kids who won.

"The older kids probably should have had more experience hearing those countries, but their enthusiasm is not the same as the little kids," Spencer said. "The little kids are more enthusiastic and more willing to guess...and get into it more."

She said the younger kids also love Kahoots!, a study tool created by National Geographic they can access on their Chromebooks. Kahoots! provides questions on geography as well as related topics like history and sociology.

"That's how we practiced in 6th grade. We just practice with Kahoots! over and over again," Spencer said.

Trevor Tolan, who made it into the finals, said he's is looking forward to taking part in it again next year. "It was fun, but hard to remember stuff."

Sixth grader Logan Tams was a bit more circumspect.

"Well it was quite good. It was exciting that one off our own won," he said. Since his favorite subject is math he's not so sure how he feels about doing the GeoBee next year. "I don't know. Maybe. It might not be as fun as I remember it."

Spencer said Lincoln School Superintendent Carla Anderson talked to her and Roberson about bringing the Geography Bee back to the shool, which held them in the 90s and early 2000's

Tams and McDonough said they took part in geography bees when they were students at the school during that time. McDonough remembered being a little intimidated by the questions at the time. Coincidentally, Roberson, who returned to Lincoln to teach in 2016, was the history teacher back then as well. He was the guy asking McDonough and Tams geography questions, too.

 

Reader Comments(0)