News Item

May 4, 2011

News Item - LCSS student has success in national Geography Challenge

Lake Cowichan secondary school's Evan Croteau knows his Canada. A couple of weeks ago, after placing top in the school district and in the top three provincially, the grade seven student finished eighth in the national final of the Great Canadian Geography Challenge (www.geochallenge.ca). The Geo Challenge is an on-line competition sponsored by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

The competition is open to students from Grade 7 to 10, giving Evan’s competitors an age advantage, and making his accomplishment all the more impressive. In fact, he was the youngest competitor in the top ten finishers.

The 16th annual competition consisted of multiple choice questions around various issues students typically learn about in Geography class, including history, weather patterns, countries’ flags, facts about countries, the location of countries, and various other things.

In the preliminary round he joined more than 100,000 participating students. On April 19, the finalist students across Canada were linked up – in the presence of a sponsor teacher - in a special competition environment, live across the country. Teachers, family and friends were able to track the students’ progress in real-time by logging onto a special section of the Geo Challenge web site. Answering 97 of the 124 questions correctly placed Evan out of the money-winning top three spots but he is eligible for three more years and intends to compete again.

After the competition, Evan told the Lake Cowichan Gazette that he has a good memory and that an electronic globe, maps, and Google Earth have all helped his growing knowledge of Canadian and world geography.