4 students take a picture with their trophy

CALHOUN, GA - W.L. Swain Elementary school students were the winners of the first Gordon County Schools Geography Bee!  

The system-wide competition, with teams from each GCS elementary school took place on Thursday, March 24th at the Gordon County College and Career Academy. The competition was comprised of three rounds that included a written portion, a jeopardy-type round of questioning, and a "final jeopardy" question.

During round one, contestants were given three minutes to correctly label states on a blank map of the United States. To receive full credit for the answers submitted by teams, each state had to be correctly identified and spelled precisely. Teams would receive a partial credit if the state was identified but was spelled improperly.

In the second round of the competition, teams took turns selecting categories of topics at varying values of points. When a category and question had been selected, all teams would then record their answer on a white board and share it with their assigned judge. The rules for full and partial credit identified in round one applied for each answer presented in round two.  

At the beginning of the final round of competition, teams were informed of their total amount of accumulated points from the first two rounds:

  • Belwood Elementary: 5,780
  • Fairmount Elementary: 6,500
  • Red Bud Elementary: 6,720
  • Sonoraville Elementary: 7,255
  • Tolbert Elementary: 6,790
  • W.L. Swain Elementary: 6,065

Using teamwork to strategize their approach to the final round, students worked together to decide how many points to wager for the last round. The final jeopardy question that was presented was, “What U.S. capital is the only one with 3 words in its name?” W.L. Swain Elementary students correctly answered, “Salt Lake City,” and with their wager of 3,035 points, they were declared the winners with 9,100 total points.

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 About Gordon County Schools Gordon County Schools system serves around 6,500 students in schools across the county including six elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools. The mission of the Gordon County School system is to build a collaborative culture that engages all students and staff in learning experiences leading to growth, empowerment, and transformation.