Top Honors For San Juan Unified Schools at NorCal Science Olympiad Competition
Local San Juan School District schools have been participating with success in an academic competition for years called Science Olympiad. The Science Olympiad competition takes place every year with student teams from all over the United States, Canada and Mexico.
An in-depth knowledge of various topics related to science, such as chemistry, biology and earth science, is the main component to this competitive academic event. Science Concepts and Knowledge, Science Processes and Thinking Skills, and Science Application and Technology are the three main categories that make up these science related events. Next to scientific knowledge, students must possess the important skill of teamwork, as most of the competition consists of school team events.
On April 17, the NorCal Science Olympiad was held in Fresno, CA. The Northern California competition determines which schools from this part of the state will go on to compete in the National Science Olympiad events in May. At the end of the NorCal competition, four San Juan Unified District Schools from both the middle and high school divisions took top honors, and two of these local schools will be heading to Chicago mid May for the national competition.
Middle school level top honors went to Arden Middle School in Sacramento, Winston Churchill Middle School in Carmichael and John Barrett Middle School, also in Carmichael. Mira Loma High School in Sacramento left Fresno with top honors at the high school level. Taking first place for the Middle School Division was Arden and Mira Loma took first place for the High School Division. Both Arden Middle and Mira Loma have won first place in the NorCal Science Olympiad competition for the last five years, and Churchill Middle has placed second for SJUSD middle schools for the last 4 years.
Mira Loma and Arden taking first place in each of their divisions means that both school teams will advance to nationals set to begin May 20. The host for the 2010 National Science Olympiad Tournament will be the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Chicago. The national competition is expecting 120 very competitive