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THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF
THE UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE

Academic Department Adds New Resources for Students and Coaches

By Treva Dayton, Academic Director | Monday, December 05, 2011 12:10 PM

Many of you are no doubt looking forward to a well-deserved break from your school responsibilities and the chance to spend time with family and friends or some quiet time to yourself or the chance to do something other than work that you truly enjoy. I hope that despite an often hectic holiday schedule of activities you find some time to rest and relax.

We’ve been working throughout the summer and fall to provide updated resources in all high school academic areas, and we trust that you’ve been using the newer information now posted on our website under each academic contest. In recent months, we’ve added a few additional items.

In July, an ad hoc committee of academic coaches for the computer applications contest met at the UIL building and discussed the future of the contest. We greatly appreciate these educators’ time and input in making certain that the contest remains both challenging and appropriately curriculum-based.

Among the suggestions from the coaches attending was the creation of a list of frequently asked questions and the answers to those questions to help inexperienced coaches and students better prepare. Linda Tarrant, the state director of com app, has provided an extensive list of FAQs and responses on the web. You’ll find this document, as well as the Computer Application Handbook, a sample test, an introductory video and more at http://www.uiltexas.org/academics/computer-applications.

The social studies contest also has additional resources this year. Larry McCarty, the social studies contest director, has complied a list of terms from the primary reading source, The Penguin History of Latin America by Edwin Williamson, which is posted on the academic website at http://www.uiltexas.org/academics/social-studies. This list will help students focus their reading and study as they prepare for the contest. The contest study packet, available for purchase, includes a brief synopsis of each chapter of the book and an additional list of general Latin American terms including important geographic places and people.

It’s exciting that this year’s topic exposes students to a region often not as well covered in textbooks and social studies classes as North America. 

Literary criticism contestants and their coaches also have a new resource to help them prepare for their contest.

State literary criticism contest director Mark Bernier has pulled together a listing of most of the terms that have been tested over the past three years and created a study aid. Each literary and historical term serving as the correct answer is matched with its four distracters in a PDF document, a format allowing easy searches. 

The idea is that the contestant can now better recognize the broad "family" of terms among which the correct answer might be best understood. Both coaches and Lit Critters should, however, understand that neither this list nor any other that might follow constitutes a study guide: this list is not exhaustive; any term in the Handbook is and shall remain eligible. 

More "aids" are in the works, including lists of poems central to the questioning in Parts 2, 3, and 4 of the tests, as well as further breakdowns of the master list itself. 

The resource is available from a link on the UIL web page for lit crit, http://www.blinn.edu/humanities/LitCrit2009-2010.htm.

We’ll be working to provide additional web resources in other contest areas in an effort to keep participation in UIL academic activities as economical as possible. We believe such resources will make it easier for academic coaches and contestants, with a multitude of interests and obligations, to be prepared to do their best in competition and to enjoy the learning needed to do so.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming holiday break and that you come back to campus in January ready to help your students stretch themselves and their intellectual and scholastic skills both in your classroom and through UIL academic competition.

Happy holidays!