Academic Bowl- Creating a Club, Help Please

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>Hey everyone. I love trivia (whether Trivial Pursuit, game shows, reading books), and would love to create an Academic Bowl team for my school. However, I have no idea how to prepare my fellow students for the competitions we may enter, or to just have fun with trivia.</p>

<p>How do you guys help your team? Are there specific parts of atlases and basic trivia everyone knows? Do you study from books? Guides? Are there sample questions?</p>

<p>Unfortunately, our club will not have any money starting off, so are there are any cheap (or preferable free) ways of studying trivia?</p>

<p>Also, what do you do at each meeting? And do you divvy up tasks? Have one music expert, a geography expert? Etc?</p>

<p>Thanks a lot!</p>

2

<p>well, for my school's academic bowl team, the teacher has these trivia packets that list authors and books, and various other trivia like that. I don't know if they're the best way to study. If you have buzzers, you could just have someone call out a question and people buzz in to practice.</p>

3

<p>An electronic buzzer? Where are those available?</p>

<p>And would you mind listing some of the books/trivia packets, if you know ?</p>

<p>Thanks :)</p>

4

<p>We use NAQT (National Academic Quiz Tournament) questions a lot, so ordering those (as well as Campbell's Quiz books) will be of tremendous value to you. Questions from past tournaments in your area will also be useful.<br>
In our school, we don't exactly divide up tasks, but you should encourage your students to start by recognizing the types of questions they are good at. It really bolsters confidence.<br>
For a fundraiser, we hosted a student-v.-teacher type game. It was fun and beneficial for everyone involved.<br>
That's the basic gist of it, but ultimately, what it comes down to is word recognition and how widely you read.</p>

5

<p>i kinda want to start up academic decathlon at my school. anyone very active in it that wants to PM me to help?</p>

6

<p>me too please, i think we have the same goal courtney!</p>

7

<p>haha yeahh except i dont kno exactly how academic decathlon competitions work but it sounds really fun.</p>

8

<p>:) i can't wait.. btw, here's a link I found for the NATQ that i see mentioned (thanks!): National</a> Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC</p>

9

<p>bump :D</p>

<p>10 char</p>

10

<p>bumppppppp. because i need help with the same thing. haha.</p>

11

<p>The best way to prep for Quizbowl is to go to tournaments and practise gamesets as often as you can. Our team practices twice a week for three hours a session (plus additional practices around our tapings) and we go to two to four tournaments a month. We purchased our buzzers from Zeecraft, a company that specializes in buzzers, and we have two working systems for each practice (in case one goes down). One buzzer console plus ten buzzers will put you back around $700-$1000, so it can get somewhat expensive. Does your area have a local televised version of the show? That's probably the best way to both recruit players and to get invites to other tournaments. </p>

<p>If you have any questions please ask away as I'm the captain of our Quizbowl team and the son of the head coach, so I know a little more about the nuts and bolts of the operation. It really is a wonderful extracurricular activity to do and I encourage everyone who enjoys trivia to give it a shot.</p>