Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Sindy Ho reacts to the screams of her classmates during the Knowledge Master Open quiz at Redwood School, while Bryan Kang and Randy Scialabba look on.

Saratoga students win in state quiz contests

By Tim Persyn

In the Redwood School library on March 20, a group of 13 sixth-grade wizards gathered around a large computer screen, anticipating the next question from the quiz program they were playing.

"What did colonial cobblers make?" appeared on the screen, followed by a list of possible answers. The energy in the room was overwhelming as the kids yelled out their thoughts about the correct answer. When they learned the answer they decided on was right, they rocked the surrounding areas of the library with celebratory noise.

These academically talented students were competing in the national Spring 1996 Elementary Knowledge Master Open, a quiz competition administered through a computer program that uses a wide range of academic subjects to test knowledge, comprehension, application and analysis.

The members of the team had reason to be excited: they had already won the sixth-grade level of the statewide Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl. In addition, Argonaut School won the fifth-grade level, but did not compete in the national competition.

A total of 205 teams competed in the fifth- and sixth-grade Quiz Bowl competition.

"When we won the state competition, it was pretty cool," said Sindy Ho, the team's captain, during a break in the national-level quiz. "We went around telling the whole school. If we win this competition--wow!--that will be amazing."

In 1995, 1,617 schools took part in the national competition, in which Redwood finished 19th.

Both the Quiz Bowl and the Knowledge Master competition were administered by computer disk. The questions covered subjects including spelling, geography, U.S. history and math. All answers were multiple choice, and students were given 60 seconds and two chances to answer each question. Teams earned 10 points for answering the question on the first try and five points for the second try.

The state competition was run by Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl of Urbandale, Iowa and the national competition by Academic Hallmarks of Durango, Colo.

Karen Sherwood, instructional media specialist at Redwood, commented on why she organized these competitions. "I do it because the kids enjoy it, because it gives academically gifted students an arena to perform, and because it allows gifted students to work as teammates in a cooperative atmosphere," she said.

The Redwood team consisted of: Alex Liu, Sindy Ho, Tiffany Seto, Irene Yen, Justin Noodleman, Randy Scialabba, Colleen Ho, Teresa Huang, Alan Sung, Joanna Sung, Troy Follmar, Ben Sandigo and Scott Moran.

The Argonaut School team consisted of: Jade Warmington, Eric Huang, Jason Chen, Judy Wang, Paula McNally, Teresa Lee, Marc Crosby, Catriona Cornett, Jonathan Wang, Philip Sung, Katie Levinson, and Daniel Yang.