Congrats to all 8 teams for advancing to the State Bowl! Check out our slideshow from regionals
Students spend at least 6 weeks researching and analyzing a topic during weekly practice sessions. This includes curating research, reading articles, watching videos and listening to podcasts. We also occasionally get the opportunity to interact with experts on a topic to glean more information.
After researching and analyzing a topic, students get two hours during competitions to read a future scene and complete the 6-step problem-solving process for a given future situation.
The 6 steps are
1) Identify 16 possible challenges
2) Identify the overall underlying problem
3) Develop 16 possible solutions, including real "WHOs" that would create or implement the solutions.
4) Develop 5 criteria to rank your solutions
5) Rank your top 8 solutions using the critera created.
6) Write a 6 paragraph essay explaining why the highest ranked solution is the best one to solve the charge in the future scene.
After completing the 2 hour packet, students then work on their presentation of action plan, or orals, where they use various items to create a 3-4 minute skit explaining their solution.
Students use one of the topics they have researched, or complete research on one of the topics available if they are not competing in another component, and write a creative short story. Students incorporate ideas and themes found within their research in their story. Stories are 1500 words or less and imagine logical outcomes of actions or events set at least 20 years in the future.
Scenario performance provides an opportunity to create and present an original oral narrative based on one of the topics from the current season. Students create a story, not written completely out but can use note cards, and tell the story in a 5 minute performance. The story makes a prediction of the future, related to the research on their topic, and is set 20-30 years in the future, told as if the future were the present.
The Illinois Visual Arts Component is designed to offer students with artistic ability an opportunity to participate in a futuristic program. Students, dealing with the same problem topics as those selected for GIPS teams for the year, develop a piece of artwork on their own.
The study and research of the topic is still present, but the format for presenting conclusions and impressions is a one, two, three, or four-dimensional piece of artwork rather than a problem solving booklet. Students may choose to address any of the four GIPS team topics for the year.