VERO BEACH — Saint Edward’s School’s fourth-grade classes placed seconc in the nation on the National Current Events League Tests, and the fifth-grade classes placed third in the nation. The National Current Events League administers four meets during the School year, with each meet consisting of 30 questions. According to their web site, “The questions are selected from the following areas and are appropriate to the individual grade level involved: General News, Arts & Entertainment, Science & Health, Business & Finance, Sports.”
This is the second year in a row in which the Saint Edward’s Lower School students ranked among the top three nationally in their knowledge of current events.
The Saint Edward’s fifth-graders interviewed termed the win “awesome” and a “great accomplishment.” Students credited a great teacher (Social Studies teacher Molly Calleri), their enthusiasm for watching the nightly news and playing “NewsBowl” weekly.
Calleri divides the class into two teams once a week and runs through a list of current news questions, ranging from politics and international issues to sports and entertainment.
“We also discuss world leaders,” she adds, “and where the countries are located geographically.” Asked about their favorite news, some Pirates keep in tune to musical hits, others vigilantly monitor top athletes and teams in the sporting world while still others find endless discussion material in issues raised by the wikileaks, or the shootings in Tucson and the conflicts in the Middle East.
They access news everywhere – online if their parents allow it through Google and headline news, through weekly magazines like Time and Newsweek, the newspaper, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and FOX and through Safari Montage which is a video streamed into the classroom. Quizzed about their parents’ role in their success, most students felt that their parents are smarter than a fifth grader, but that when it comes to news the Saint Edward’s students are an inspiration to their parents.
