Treva Dayton
Assistant Academic Director
By the time you receive this Leaguer, all elementary and junior high academic district meets will have been completed. I hope UIL activities and competition was a positive experience for all involved, and most especially for your students.
Thanks to those district meet hosts and directors who have submitted the district participation summary (found in the A+ Handbook) and to those contest directors who also shared the scoring results of selected contests as we requested this year. If you have not yet done so, please fax or mail the participation summary to the League office.
We’d also like to thank the hundreds and hundreds of educators who served as UIL academic coaches for their hard work and dedication and for encouraging students to accept the challenge of academic competition; the administrators and UIL coordinators whose support, planning and attention to detail make UIL programs possible for students; and the many volunteers who assisted with hosting meets, grading papers, judging speaking events, feeding masses of students, celebrating their efforts and then cleaning up the mess.
As campuses begin planning for UIL activities for the coming year, we remind you that the elementary and junior high calendar for academic competition has been modified. It is important you refer to the calendar before planning your dates of competition, and equally important you note the deadlines for ordering contest materials. The 2004-2005 E/JH Calendar was printed in the April Leaguer and is available on our web site at http:/ /www.uil.utexas.edu/aca/ejh/ejhindex.html. There are no rule changes for elementary and junior high contests for the coming year. Things you should be aware of for the coming year
• The social studies pilot for grades 5-8 will be continued, and contest material will be available for both fall/winter and spring districts, as well as invitational meets. The A+ Academic Study Materials Booklets will contain the spring district tests that were used this year.
• There will be a new A+ Spelling List, as there is every year, for grades 3-8.
• For the art contest (grades 4-8), 2004-05 is the second year of the cycle, so the art prints and Art Smart will NOT change.
• The Merriam-Webster Intermediate Dictionary remains the official source for both the spelling and dictionary contests. Although a new edition of the dictionary will be published in July 2004, test writers will continue to use the current edition. We will review the new dictionaries and work to see that contestants can answer all test questions, regardless of the Merriam-Webster edition they are using.
• For the 2004-05 maps, graphs & charts contest, test writers will use ONLY the 2003 edition of the Nystrom Desk Atlas, with the purple and red cover. If you ordered atlases from the League this year, you received that edition.
• The listening contest format will remain objective questions with no tie-breaker, but tests may now include short answer questions as well as multiple choice and true/false.
Modern Oratory Topics for 2004-05
Suggestions for modern oratory topics were collected from coaches,
teachers and UIL staff, and selected junior high coaches were asked to rank those topics before the final five were determined.
Not surprisingly, many different topic ideas from the original list were favorites among various balloters.
Hopefully, the topics selected and listed below will provide something of interest to any student interested in participating in modern oratory.
1. Should teens who commit violent crimes be tried as adults?
2. Can the growing problem of obesity in the U.S. be reversed?
3. Should downloading music from the Internet be treated as a crime?
4. Does American society place too much emphasis on sports?
5. Should Americans be able to purchase prescription drugs from outside the U.S.?
Music Memory List for 2004-2005
The UIL Music Memory Committee determined the music selections for the coming year, and then a number of music experts helped to refine the official list. I am well aware that there were problems with the quality of some of the audio cassettes provided for district competition this year, and we plan to provide CDs for district meets in 2004-05. We have also modified the music memory answer sheet for grades 5- 6 to provide more room for contestants to write the titles.
Capital Conference July 9-10, 2004
Held each summer at UT-Austin, the Capital Conference provides an excellent learning and networking opportunity for elementary and junior high UIL coordinators and academic coaches.
Beginning Friday morning, July 9, and concluding mid-afternoon on Saturday, July 10, the conference will include sessions for E/JH campus coordinators as well as sessions on individual contests such as math and number sense, social studies, one-act play, oral reading and other speaking events, the pilot social studies contest, dictionary skills, and the music memory and art contests.
We will have workshops on hosting a meet and building a program, and sessions in which participants can ask questions of UIL staff and share with each other. Conference registration fee is $50 prior to June 1 and $75 for those who register after June 1. The fee includes lunch on both days, and attendees will receive a copy of the newest A+ Handbook, along with other materials provided by presenters.
We hope you can join us for a weekend of learning and sharing. See our web site at http:// www.uil.utexas.edu/aca/04capcon.html for additional information.