Finding success on a map
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 02:17 p.m., March 31, 2008
Updated 02:17 p.m., March 31, 2008
Where is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum located?
Jacob Wright knows — Abilene — and he’ll be there Friday as one of the top 100 Kansas students competing in the National Geographic Geography Bee state contest.
Jacob, who will be 12 in April, won the Lowther North Intermediate School geographic bee, which qualified him to take an hour-long, 100-question qualification quiz in January, as did other first-place winners in schools across the state. The 100 top students from the written test qualified to compete in the state contest.
The test included questions about governments of different countries, land masses and territories, he said.
“We had been waiting for the test results for quite a while, and we were just about to give up,” he said in an interview late last week.
The call finally came, however, and Jacob is ready to go. It’s not that he is spending great chunks of time in preparing, but he has been taking some preparatory tests on the National Geographic Web site, reading through a few geography books and testing during his gifted education class with enrichment services teacher Laura Albertson.
“My teacher has set aside some time for me in class to take the quiz,” he said.
Jacob’s classroom teacher is Cindy Paul.
Jacob likes challenging himself on retention.
“For the school geography bee, you study a little bit,” he said. “In between your school geography bee and the state, you study quite a bit. ... I like trying to learn as much as you can in the time you are given, then seeing how much you can remember.”
He remembered enough from reading one of the books to answer one of three written questions that made up the final round of the LNIS bee. He gave a synopsis of those questions:
1. What U.S. territory is an island, near the Philippines, that starts the day off?
2. Name one landlocked country that borders India.
3. What city lies within another city?
Because he recently had read something about India, Jacob recalled that Bhutan bordered India. “Guam” was the answer to the first question and “Vatican City,” located within Rome, was the answer to No. 3. Other students in what turned out to be the final round could answer none of the three, giving Jacob the win.
“And, really, if you just take one of those books and read it over and over again, each time you’ll remember something different. That’s how I got the Bhutan thing,” Jacob said.
The questions had seemed to ratchet up in difficulty and spread out to other regions of the world every few rounds, he said.
“The first couple of rounds at school, they’ll ask you mainly U.S. questions, like state capitals and state locations, and sometimes they’ll give you a map with no names,” he said.
The next few rounds concerned continents, then positions of countries.
“The easiest part for me is probably knowing where things are related to with other things in that category, like countries and states,” Jacob said.
“If you kind of study in sections, they’ll give you a couple of reference points. A lot of times they’ll use the same countries.”
At the state contest, he expects to be asked questions about locations of rivers and mountains, population, and other specifics.
Because of space limitations at the Abilene venue, only one of his parents, Kristi and Tim Wright, will be able to be in the audience to watch him compete at state.
According to information from the National Geographic Society, millions of students from almost 14,000 schools in the United States participated in the basic level of school competitions in November.
The state bees are the second level. Each state winner will receive $100, a National Geographic globe and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for student and teacher to the national finals on May 20 and 21.
The first place winner in the national competition will receive a $25,000 college scholarship and lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society. Second- and third-place finishers will receive $15,000 and $10,000 college scholarships, respectively.