What is Scholastic Bowl?
Scholastic Bowl is an IESA extracurricular activity that students in 7th and 8th grade can participate in at MJHS. “Schol Bowl” is a trivia competition against other local schools and runs from the end of January through April. We have 12 matches against other schools, some we host, and some we travel to their school. Matches typically start at 4:00 and include an "A" and "B" match. We usually get done with both matches in about two hours.
Before our matches start in the middle/end of February we will have 2 “practices” a week. The practices are on Tuesday and Thursday from 3:00-4:00 in Mr. Parrott’s room (Room 109). Once we start matches we’ll usually have two matches (Tues/Thurs) and one practice a week (Wednesday).
The first few practices will be learning about the rules of how the game works along with some fun activities to encourage team work and collaboration, since these are skills that will be needed during the meets, besides your smarts of course!
The topics are math, science, language arts, fine arts, miscellaneous (sports, current events, etc), and social studies. There are subtopics from each of these categories as well. In a matched there are 5 from the core topics (science, math, ELA, and Social studies) and then 2 questions each from fine arts and miscellaneous.
This makes 24 "toss up" questions, where anyone on the team can buzz in and answer. If you get it right, you get your chance at earning bonus questions for additional points. Though, if you get them wrong, the other team has a chance to steal those same points.
If you’re interested in joining the team, that’s great! I want you to be able to be available for most of the matches. When we get closer to the days and people are gone we can sub people in and out. I understand you have other obligations as well and I like that you are involved with other things. A few extracurriculars are going on at the same time like play/musical, volleyball, clubs, and then track in the spring. When track starts I will coordinate with the track coaches about practice times/matches so students can attend both.
“Tryouts” will consist of 40 trivia questions. The questions come directly from past scholastic bowl matches. There will be a variety of questions from each topic used in SB. Everyone is welcome to be on the team. I am not going to cut anyone who wants to participate in our event. When it comes to matches, we will only have 14 people “dressed” for the match. This can be different week to week and I will assign people to matches each week. We have an A team and a B team. Only 5 people can participate in the match at a time but subs can be done in the match.
I plan that if you are serious and want to be a part of the team, I will get you in as many matches as possible.