The High School Knowledge Bowl Has Selected Its Team to Go to Brasilia

High school students compete against each other in the practice rounds of Knowledge Bowl practice which takes place in the art room on Mondays and Fridays during first practice. [by Dr. Cristina Meier]

Byline: Benjamin Oliveira

PACA’s high school Knowledge Bowl team, starting practices after the first week of school, started with one goal in mind: to prepare for the upcoming Knowledge Bowl Tournament to be hosted by Nations School in Brasilia. This year’s team of six students must be chosen from the entire group that attends Knowledge Bowl practices on Monday and Friday afternoons.

The Knowledge Bowl is a high school tournament which happens every year and is hosted by different schools who participate in the international conference known as AASB (the American Association for Schools in Brazil). Last year, the high school tournament was hosted by the Nations school in Brasilia.

This year, Nations will host the tournament again, but in October instead of March. For the PACA team, it is an opportunity to compete with students at other schools on an intellectual level, and also have the opportunity to interact with people from other schools.

The Knowledge Bowl uses trivia games to sharpen student’s mental recall, which tests a student’s knowledge of school subjects, cultural and community facts.

High school students at PACA go to two practices per week, every Monday and Friday. Middle school students attend one practice a week on Thursdays. This gives high school students more time to practice during the semester of their tournament.

During each practice, they have the opportunity to answer any type of question: such as math, physics, science, pop culture, world history, U.S history, etc. For every question answered correctly, one or two points are awarded to the individual person. Every question answered incorrectly results in a one point deduction. In this way, each person slowly earns points.

According to Junior Rafael Portella, who participated in the last Knowledge Bowl, it is important to specialize in specific areas of knowledge in order to help the team in the competition.

“I think that everyone has certain categories in which they are better than others,” said Portella. “Some are harder for me because there are things I still haven’t learned. This year we lost someone who was really good in math and science, but now we have players with other specialties. I think we have a team with a very diverse skillset and knowledge. This is why it is important to have lots of people practicing, as everyone is good at different things.”

So far, Knowledge Bowl practices have an attendance of approximately 10 to 12 people. This provides big competition for those who are hoping to be on the team that will attend the Knowledge Bowl.

Guilherme Lima, the art teacher at PACA and the coach for the Knowledge Bowl teams, will be tasked with choosing the six students from this group to go to the tournament.

“The hardest thing is choosing who goes to the tournament, because 12 people go to practice but we can only take six to the tournament,” said Lima.

For Lima, making this selection is difficult because the competition between the team members is great.

The second hardest thing for Mr. Lima is looking for resources for practice questions that are both affordable and provide an authentic practice of possible Knowledge Bowl questions. These are the two hardest parts of coaching the team.

Although problematic, it is actually good for the school and gives the team more player options with more diverse people knowing each topic.

The Knowledge Bowl practice activity is a great opportunity for students to interact with each other, learn more and also a way to compete in whatever type of knowledge they have.

The names of the six students who have been selected to represent PACA at the Knowledge Bowl was announced at the beginning of the first week of September. The names of those students are: Rafael Portella, Davi Magalhaẽs, Pedro Souza, Luke Meier, Priscila Fray and Jun Yoshikawa.

The team will travel to Brasília on October 2-4 to compete with other schools, and try to bring a trophy home for the school. These students will be chaperoned by Renato Sousa, Mr. Gui Lima, and Dr. Cristina Meier.