Congratulations to Florence District 1 students

Here's the sort of team I'd love to see lined up across the podium of the State House, draped with medals and receiving the adulation of an appreciative legislative body.

Perhaps in the next life.

Still, it's worth celebrating that the students of Florence School District 1 are given credit for their achievements in the local newspaper.

Teams from five Florence School District One schools met Saturday morning to test their literay wits in Battle of the Books 2012, a quiz show-style tournament at Moore Intermediate School.

Teams from the host school, along with Briggs, Dewey Carter, North Vista and Royall E lementary S chools, competed against each other in a double-elimination setting. After nearly two hours of question-and-answer rounds in the school’s auditorium, the teams from Royall and Briggs faced off in the championship match. Royall took the trophy home for the third year in a row.

Royall coach Susan Jenkins said that the team was excited to have competed.

“We are thrilled to death to take the trophy home to Royall again this year,” Jenkins said. “I feel like all the teams did great and represented their schools well. Our students worked very hard.”

Briggs coach Amy Rhodes was also impressed with her school’s performance.

“I feel like we did a wonderful job,” Rhodes said. “The kids prepared every afternoon for two months for this. They were just ready to compete and I’m proud of them.”

Susan Lane, a media specialist at Moore and the coordinator for this year’s Battle of the Books, said the goal of the event is to develop a fun way of engaging students with books.

“It’s all about reading,” Lane said. “It’s to get [the students] reading the newest, quality literature.”

Each match of the tournament was composed of two different rounds of 10 questions each. In the group discussion rounds, questions were asked to each five-player team in alternating fashion and teammates could confer on the answer. The first player for either team to “buzz in” was given the chance to answer the question during toss-up rounds. Students had only 15 seconds to answer a question.

The questions were about plot lines and character descriptions from 20 books that the students read before the event. Each book was chosen from a list of South Carolina Book Award winners or nominees.

Congratulations to the students who participated in this program. They should count themselves lucky to have access to such programs and to great public school educators in this district.