Knights of Columbus Annual Regional Catholic Geography Bee

Each year*, McGivney Council #29 of the Knights of Columbus invites each Catholic middle/intermediate school in a region of southwestern Connecticut to nominate three students currently in fourth through eighth grade to participate in a Catholic geography bee.

The next bee will be in March, 2025.

Council #29 is blessed to have Immaculate High School in Danbury as the site for the bee.

Goals

To serve the Knights' mission to support Catholic education and youth, by
- showcasing and rewarding academic achievement in our Catholic schools, and
- acquainting academically-strong Catholic-middle-schoolers with our area's Catholic high school, to encourage them to continue their Catholic education when they reach high school.
To serve the Knights' mission to strengthen the Church and foster growth in faith, by celebrating and encouraging knowledge of God's creation and the people and resources He arrayed across it.
To foster awareness of Catholic contributions to society and history by including some specifically-Catholic content, such as the Catholic origins of some place names, holy sites, famous Catholics from particular places, etc.
To provide for each school's top geography students to compete at an inter-scholastic level without being blocked by e.g. a weed-out test.
To reinforce to our youth that their educational achievement fostered by family and faculty is also valued by the community at large.

How the Bee Runs

The bee is organized into "rounds". In each round, each participant answers one question about world geography, North American geography, or regional geography. All questions are open-answer, not multiple-choice. Each round is a "speaking round" or a "writing round".

In each speaking round, much like a spelling bee, each participant in turn gets his own question, to answer correctly in order to remain in the bee. However each participant is given "another chance", so the first time a participant misses a speaking question, he uses up this "chance" and remains in the bee. So participants generally remain in the bee until missing two speaking questions. The bee continues until all but one participant have been eliminated.

A unique feature of our bee is writing rounds which provide an opportunity to win yet another chance, to cancel another later speaking miss. In a writing round, all remaining participants write an answer at the same time to a single question like Name as many countries with Baltic Sea shorelines as you can. Each writing question specifies both a time limit and how the best answer will be determined, such as the most correct countries without naming any incorrect ones. Whoever writes the best answer wins another chance. Participants may accumulate chances in this way.

Links to More Information

For invited schools

For nominated students

Further details about how the bee runs

Sample Media Coverage

Bethel Patch 2019 , Fairfield County Catholic 2017 , Ridgefield Patch 2016 , Newtown's HamletHub 2014 , Fairfield County Catholic 2024

Bee History

The bee began in 2011 crowning one champion within the city of Danbury, then grew to present awards to three top finishers in a larger region. Awards have included trophies, certificates, and monetary awards to the student, and a trophy to the school.