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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Learning is fun for 300, please


Nadine Krop, 11, high-fives Team Three after answering a question correctly in Classroom Jeopardy! at Lidgerwood Elementary School Feb. 8. Joe Biegler's fifth-grade class received the game, won by student Hunter Jasper.
 (Rajah Bose / The Spokesman-Review)

From Lidgerwood Elementary School, this is Classroom Jeopardy.

If real-life “Jeopardy!” contestants have as much fun as the students in Joe Biegler’s fifth-grade class had last week, it’s probably worth the trip to California even if they don’t win the money.

One of Biegler’s students, Hunter Jasper, saw a commercial while he was watching “Jeopardy!” to send in a letter to win “Classroom Jeopardy!”

“My mom is a ‘Jeopardy!’ freak, and she is responsible for me being a ‘Jeopardy!’ addict,” Jasper said he wrote in a letter to the show.

He loves to watch “Jeopardy!” and hopes to one day be on the show.

Jasper won the game, which retails for around $500 on the game show’s Web site. The original plan was to have a member of the Jeopardy Clue Crew to come to the school to show the students how to play.

Unfortunately, school was closed because of snow the day the crew was scheduled to visit, but Jasper was able to visit KHQ-TV to play the game, meet the “Jeopardy!” folks and get hats and pens for his classmates.

The students in the class got their first opportunity to play the game last week. Wearing their new “Jeopardy!” baseball caps that said, “Get a Clue,” on the back, the students were divided into three teams and each kid got a turn with the buzzer.

Biegler said that the writers of the show customized some of the categories to fit the class curriculum such as science, spelling and Washington state.

The “Jeopardy!” round of the game included the categories “What’s the Story,” “Spelling ‘B,’ ” “The American Flag,” “A Trip to the Zoo,” “Games and Toys,” and “Mathematical Principles.”

Jasper had the honor of keeping score and selecting the categories during this first time game, since he has already played. He had his own special remote to select the categories on the television screen.

“I’ll take Spelling ‘B’ for 600, please,” the first contestant shouted out.

Since the “B” in the title was in quotation marks, the answers all started with the letter B. Students were challenged further in this category, since they not only had to get the answer right, but spell it right.

“Going over Niagara Falls in one of these isn’t nearly as easy as shooting a fish in it,” the question read.

Just like in real “Jeopardy!” the buzzer took some getting used to. At first, Team 2 was the only team to buzz in for several questions, but soon, the other teams figured out when the best time to buzz in was.

The kids had a great time, thinking about their answers, shouting them out loud enough to be heard over the other students and cheering when their team got an answer right.

The top score of the day bounced back and forth between the teams.

The double jeopardy round included the categories, “Science Stuff,” “Animated Movies,” “Sports Teams Home Cities,” “Cereal,” “Internet Slang” and “Washington State.”

Although the kids have been studying many of the subjects, the excitement of the game sometimes hampered their answers.

“This is Washington’s tallest mountain,” read the question.

“What is Mount Everest?” asked one of the students.

The answer was really Mount Rainier.

“I’m kind of disappointed because you spent two days learning that Mount Everest is in Nepal,” Biegler told the class.

The kids also discovered a question that the “Jeopardy!” writers got wrong.

It referred to two college basketball teams in Spokane – the Wildcats and the Bulldogs – that were doing well this season.

During the double jeopardy round, the students were disappointed that no one could get the right answer, since the Wildcats the question was referring to was supposed to be the Cougars of Washington State University.

The final jeopardy round was “Hunter’s Winning Letter,” which asked if his letter to “Jeopardy!” was expository, literary or persuasive.

It was a very close game at this point: Team 1 had 2,900 points, Team 2 had 2,500 points and Team three had 3,800 points.

While they were thinking, the game played the “Jeopardy!” theme song and many of the children danced.

The answer was, “What is persuasive?” and every team answered correctly. Based on the team’s wagers, Team 1 won the game with 5,800 points.

Mariah Williams was on the winning team and later said that she had a great time playing.

Biegler said that he was very surprised that Jasper won the game for the class. The game will stay with the school, and Biegler said that it will be available for all the classes in the school to play.

“I thought it was a great success,” he said. “We’ll play it when we review for science and math tests.”