East Cobb elementary takes two state titles

A competition of an unusual sort took place at Shallowford Falls Elementary this spring. Though it involved students vying for honors, it also featured two teachers grappling over who would get students on their competition teams. At this East Cobb school, both the Science Olympiad and the Reading Bowl teams shared some of the same students, and key contests for both fell on the same dates. “Our state meet was the same time as the Cobb County Olympiad,” said Janice Kelley, the school’s media specialist who organizes the Reading Bowl team. “We wound up having to bargain which kids would be best at which bowl!” The haggling must have paid off: Kelley’s team of 10 took the state reading bowl title for the first time. The following week, the Science Olympiad crew won the state’s top honors for the second year in a row. And Olympiad coordinator and fourth-grade teacher Kimeron Puckett was only somewhat surprised at the dual championships.

“The secret is a combination of smart, dedicated kids, dedicated parents and a school community that supports us,” Puckett said. “We have teachers who come before school and stayed after to practice with kids. They’ve even done it during their lunch times. We know this is a strong program at our school, and the kids know if they want to make the team, they have to prepare them- selves.”

T he Science Olympiad team had eight fifth graders and a smattering of fourthand third-year students who worked for months on a vari- ety of science challenges. Shallowford’s specialty: water rockets.

“We had three kids prepar- ing all year on those, while others studied insects,” said Puckett. “There’s a wide range of topics, and some are based on building, others on knowl- edge, and the kids work on activities all year to prepare. We have practice times from October until March.” Kelley’s reading crew faced equally daunting challenges. More than a dozen students signed on to read 18 books and memorize details so they’d be prepared to answer any question about the mate- rial that covered topics as broad as World War II spies, science fiction and bipolar disease. “We read them over and over, and drill questions about them,” said Kelley. “And these are all new books they hadn’t read before. We got them last year, and most kids read them over the summer. But it’s definitely not for the casual reader; the competition is fierce. Just in Cobb alone, we had about 25 elementary schools competing. You have to be a kid who reads big, fat books and doesn’t mind reading them over and over.”

For Kelley, who retired at the end of the school year, the state championship was a high note to a long career.

“I never had a team like this one; they were unique,” she said. “This is the best way I could imagine to go out.”

Information about Shallowford Falls Elementary is online at cobbk12.org/shallowfordfalls.

CONTRIBUTED Shallowford Falls Elementary students took top honors in the state’s Reading Bowl competition.