Lakeside Elementary School students donned their detective hats last month during the "Mystery Festival," an interactive, critical thinking program presented by UC-Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science. First- through third-graders solved "Why the Teddy Bear was Missing," while upper grades solved a murder mystery, examining a crime scene and several stations set up with revealing "physical evidence" of the crime. Parent volunteers guided students through the stations, but once back in their classrooms, students were on their own to analyze the data they had collected.
Louise Van Meter Elementary School is well-represented this year in the annual San Francisco Examiner Spelling Bee. Thirty fourth- and fifth-graders competed in a written bee, after which the group was narrowed down to 11 top spellers who competed in an oral bee: Aileen Aranovsky, Joey Auricchio, Laney Chinn, Matt Herrick, Judy Innis, Mark Lubeck, Claire Meyers, Erin Poulson (first runner-up), Rishi Satia, Jessica Webb and Daniel Zimardi. Fourth-grader Chinn was the winner and will go on to compete against 200 other students at the regional spelling bee in San Francisco, with a written bee qualifying round Feb. 24 and an oral bee final round March 23. The regional bee winner will be flown to Washington, D.C., to compete in the 69th Annual National Spelling Bee, held May 27-June 1.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 14, 1996.
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