First Annual Geography Bee Scotland Elementary School

Monday March 11th was an exciting day at Scotland Elementary School as two fourth graders and four 5th graders battled it out in Scotland’s first annual Geography Bee.

Competing students had been getting up early every Thursday morning since October, to attend a pre-school enrichment Geography Club run by volunteer parents, Dan Briody, Bev Griggs and Deirdre Basile.  4th grader Sam Briody said "I had to wake up early, but I got to have breakfast with my dad, and then go to Geography Club."

Geography, as defined by National Geographic for the Geo Bee, is a very broad subject and includes the study of countries and capitals, physical features of the earth, climate, natural resources, economics, language, culture, religion and more.

At the pre-school enrichment club, the students learned about geography in fun and exciting ways.  They played the National Geographic Geo Bee board game, and they explored different countries and places and visited them on Google Earth via the smart board.  The students also learnt about a variety of geographic terms including longitude and latitude, climatic terms such as hurricane and tornado, and physical feature terms such as archipelago and isthmus.  In preparation for the big day, they also participated in mock Geography Bees.

On the day of the Bee, the six contestants were seated up on the stage in front of a crowd of around 200 people including their teachers, their principal, parents and fellow students.  As Scotland principal Mark Solomon reminded the audience of how nerve wracking this experience could be, some of the contestants were visibly quaking in their boots.  When I asked Leo Alexandroff how nervous he was on a scale of 1-100, he said 200. 

As the Bee began, one by one, the students came to the podium to answer questions which quickly became harder and harder.  The audience grew quieter and quieter as they realized that they now didn’t know the answers, and were perhaps feeling thankful that they were in the audience and not up on stage.  4th grader Quin Mahoney said “It was fun to watch; I didn’t know half of the answers; I was very impressed.  Francesco Caro agreed.  He said “I only knew a few questions so I was really impressed”.

It was a double elimination competition so one by one the competitors were knocked out until only two remained; Lucy Basile and Katherine Landler.  Lucy was the winner and was warmly congratulated by her fellow contestants who all performed outstandingly. Contestant Leslie Peterson said “I loved competing in the Geo Bee.  I’m really proud of Lucy winning, she did a great job, and so did Katherine, Marc, Sam and Leo”.