HH_020719

6 | February 7, 2019 | The Homer Horizon NEWS
homerhorizon.com
Seventh-grader wins Homer Jr. High Geography Bee
Bella Zarlengo
Editorial Intern
The National Geographic
Geography Bee has been
occurring for more than
30 years around the United
States, and for the past
10 years, Homer Jr. High
School has been a participant.
This year’s bee was held
on Jan. 16 at the school’s
library, where parents and
teachers were able to watch.
The champion this year was
seventh-grader Jameson
Clark, who also won the bee
when he was in fifth grade.
Clark said he felt “pretty
good” about winning.
To qualify for the geography
bee, 914 seventh- and
eighth-grade students at
Homer Jr. High answered
a preliminary round of
seven questions. During
the preliminary round, 85
students answered six to
seven questions correctly
and moved onto a tiebreaker
round to qualify for the Top
10 spots.
One of the Top 10 students
at this year’s bee was
runner-up Declan Kelly.
Kelly was last year’s champion
at Homer. Kelly said
Clark was good competition
to have, and he performed
well.
Eighth-grade social studies
teacher Timothy Oess
is the coordinator of the
school’s Geography Bee,
and he was also the teacher
who decided to register the
school into the competition
for the first time 10 years
ago.
“I just heard about it, and
I thought it’d be fun — a
fun competition and to learn
more about the world,” Oess
said.
During the competition
of the Top 10 students, participants
go through rounds
of oral and written questions,
fighting through
double elimination. After
seven rounds, Clark and
Kelly were the only students
left who hadn’t missed two
questions.
For the championship
round, both boys answered a
series of three questions, and
Clark answered one question
correctly, while Kelly was
not able to get any.
“Some of them [the questions]
were pretty hard, but I
knew most of them,” Clark
said.
Oess said the questions get
progressively more difficult,
starting with U.S. capitals
and moving on to questions
about countries in Africa and
Europe.
“It seems like generally,
U.S. geography is strong
with a lot of them,” he said.
“African geography seems
to trip kids up the most, I’ve
seen.”
Oess said students probably
struggle with questions
pertaining to Africa
the most because it is such a
large continent and it is not
covered very much in the
school’s curriculum.
Before the bee, students
are offered resources including
books and websites from
Seventh-grader Jameson Clark won this year’s GeoBee after eight rounds of questions Jan. 16 at Homer Jr. High School.
Photos by Bella Zarlengo/22nd Century Media
teachers, and there is also a
GeoBee Challenge app that
students can use to answer
example questions.
“I didn’t really prepare,”
Clark said. “I just looked at a
Edward Dzielski answers an oral question presented by social studies
teacher Timothy Oess.
few questions on the GeoBee
app, but that was about it.”
Kelly also said he did not
prepare much for the bee because
geography comes easy
to him.
“I just think it’s really interesting
to learn about other
cultures and other places
[and] see all of the natural
beauty of it,” Kelly said.
Because Clark won, he
will prepare to take an online
qualifying test to compete
in the state geography bee,
where the Top 100 scorers
from across Illinois are eligible
to participate.
Homer Jr. High participants in the 2019 National Geographic GeoBee.