The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Fifth-grade student Teague Wessel is the Sisters Middle School Geographic Bee Champion. He recently tested for the regional championship. If Wessel is in the top 100 students in the region he will attend the State event held in Salem.

The National Geographic Bee is an annual competition organized by the National Geographic Society, designed to inspire and reward students' curiosity about the world. Students from 10,000 schools across the United States compete in the 2017 National Geographic Bee for a chance to win college scholarships.

Wessel says he was excited to win the first time in the competition.

"My favorite thing is learning about the terrain on earth, like mountains," he said. "It was cool to learn how the continents move."

Fifth-grade teacher Tiffany Tisdel worked to have fifth- and sixth-grade students at Sisters Middle School compete this year. Just fifth-graders competed last year.

Students competed in a written and verbal test, and the top 10 from each grade competed for the school's title.

The winning query at SMS's event was, "name the country where the endangered snow leopard lives."

"I love it (the GeoBee) because it helps students see where we sit in the world," says Tisdel.

Her students prepare by doing weekly geography lessons using printed atlases.

"They (the atlases) are getting harder to find every year," she says. "They keep going out of print. Something about looking at a map, it helps develop a sense of place."

Next year Tisdel hopes to include fourth and seventh grades and add in the eighth grade the following year.

"I think others should participate because geography can be important later in life," Wessel said.