Last Thursday, January 23rd was the annual National Geographic Bee. As you may know, seven ODE students (all from Mrs. Tera Clark’s class) participated in this event. These students were Sammy Amador, Danny Amador, Isaiah Sokol, Luke Fisher, Joel Adams, and Kaylie Tello, Joshua Muhammad. All in all, these seven students did quite well with two scoring in the top ten and one of them coming in second place.
The Geography Bee certainly got more difficult this year, with questions regarding areas from all seven continents, the animal inhabitants of these lands, state abbreviations, and the agriculture and nicknames of each state.
So, as like most years, the first round would comprise of seven questions per person with each question getting harder and harder. The first round was designed to bring the number of participants down to ten and from there move onto the second stage. The first three rounds of questions were fairly easy with them regarding the states and being multiple choice. After the first rounds, it certainly got difficult with the questions focusing on weird but true facts, animal questions, and the seventh round of questions revolving around lesser-known countries. The most difficult round was quite easily the last round of questions. In the first round, only two or three people getting their questions right.
After the number of people had been reduced to ten (with five ODE students being knocked out) the remaining people were asked one more oral question then moved on to a visual question. The visual question was responsible for knocking out even more contestants, with many people getting a question wrong in both this question and the one before and therefore getting plenty of who was left out. Then there was three. Faith, Danny, and Reagan. Reagan got knocked out and left Danny and Faith left with a wrong question each. In one last round, Danny got knocked out and left the girl named Faith the champion for the second year running.
With the Bee being over, all the contestants were able to each snacks and talk then go home. With the thrilling Geography Bee being over I recommend that anyone who is reading this go to next year’s Geo Bee which will most likely be held in Riverside Village Hall like this year or Riverside Public Library like the year before.