MLES 5th/6th grade students prep for eventual high school participation in extra-curricular academic activity
Knowledge Bowl – or “K-Bowl” – to those familiar with the high school academic competition – has come to Mountain Lake Public Elementary School (MLES).
Jon Harder, Mountain Lake Public School Technology Coordinator – and a coach for both junior high (grades 7-8) and senior high (grades 9-12) K-Bowl teams – has been working for the past five with participating students from the fifth-grade classrooms of Cheri Strom and Justin Thompson, and the sixth-grade classrooms of Annette Kunkel and Kyle Blomgren. Those weeks of practice culminated in a fifth- and sixth-grade K-Bowl competition on Friday afternoon, November 21, in the elementary library.
Throughout the course of the weeks of prep, Harder has been gearing the students towards future extra-curricular K-Bowl competition on the junior high and senior high teams. Those contests are coordinated through Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative.
K-Bowl competitions include a written round and four oral rounds. Questions test the students’ recall, problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Questions asked are inter-disciplinary on an elementary level, and include American history, world history, government, current events, economics and law, geography, literature, English, mathematics, physical science, life science, earth science, health and psychology, art and music and general knowledge of Minnesota.
During the contest’s oral rounds, teams race against each other to be the first to “buzz in” and answer the question correctly.
At Thursday’s contest, the trio of teams (mixed fifth- and sixth-grade students) competed orally on 50 questions posed by Harder. As Harder pronounced the questions, each team had the opportunity to be the first to “buzz in” to answer each specific question within the 15-second time limit. The competition followed traditional K-Bowl oral round rules.
Below is a photo gallery from the afternoon contest:
