Academic Team Match

Last year and this year, Weston has been on his school's academic team. He has really enjoyed it!!! They compete against other Elementary schools in the area. Their season begins in November and ends in March. There are 8 kids on the 4th grade team and 8 kids on the 5th grade team. When they compete, it is 4 children from one school's team against 4 children on the other school's team. There are 30 questions for each half of the match. Each half of the match is 10 minutes long.
This is Weston at his last match. I forgot my camera, so I took these pictures with my phone. :) You can see that each child is holding a stick-like thing in their hand. That is their buzzer. They each have a name plate so that the moderator can call on them when they buzz in to answer a question. The score is kept on computer and the time and score is projected on a screen above the moderator and score keepers heads. Whoever buzzes in first gets to answer the question and their name is projected up on the screen with the time and the score.

I wish that I had a better spot at the match so that I could have taken better pictures. At any rate, they ask all sorts of crazy questions about everything under the sun. There are math questions, history questions, science questions, language questions, music, art, etc. Some are quite difficult. There are lots that I don't know the answer to (shh....don't tell anyone!) because they are that hard. Weston loves it. They have a binder that they study out of. I am glad that he tried out for it and was placed on the team. It gives him lots of good challenges for that good brain that he has! :)

I took this one so that you could see the screen where the score and the time were and where they project up the name of who buzzes in. This was at the end of their match. Weston's team scored 24 and the other team scored 8. Our school has yet to loose a match this year. You can see that the time left was 1 minute, 22 seconds. They actually ran out of questions before they ran out of time at this match. The big white strip at the bottom of the screen, just above the moderator and scorer's heads is where the name of the child that is answering the question pops up when they buzz in. I have really enjoyed going to the matches and being able to spend some one on one time with Weston on the way to and from the matches. It must be completely quiet for the match, so no one usually comes with us. (The little ones would make too much noise!) There are just a few more weeks until their Governor's cup competition. That is the district competition. If they place there, they go on to the regional competition. This year for those competitions, Weston will also be taking written exams in Science and Social Studies.