As a middle school teacher in Nebraska in the 1990's, I was interested in a current events quiz game activity that would get my students excited and motivated to follow the news on their own. To do this, I recognized that my first goal was to battle classroom apathy that goes along with being a pre-teen and teen. I tried several different quiz products on the market. I had trouble with these products because I was always rewriting the questions. After time had passed, I realized that what I was fixing was the content that was intended to "stump" my students. I quickly found out that a "stumped" student led to loss of interest, boredom and eventual discipline problems.

The lesson I learned was if I was going to do this, I needed to develop a quiz game that was productive, not counter-productive. The News Bowl USA lifelong learning quiz program has successfully proven to motivate interest in the news and battle students apathy at all levels.

News Bowl USA has five elements that make it effective in K-12 schools:

1. We wrote questions that students could guess at, even if they had no idea what the answer was.

2. We added humor to the quiz game because students love class time where they are allowed to be expressive and free to smile.

3. We developed NewzBrain game rules in various forms, such as the popular Las Vegas NewzBrain, the Pigskin NewzBrain, jeopardy style and other games.

4. We gave teachers the choice of implementing NewzBrain as a 5-15 minute sponge activity played daily or throughout the day or a full weekly 30-45 minute enrichment activity. We provide an interactive white board game and an accelerated challenge called the NewzBrain Monthly Big Game Challenge.

5. We stress class interaction between the teacher and the students. NewzBrain is an activity where learning should take place together. In other words, the teachers are never the experts. When learning takes place on an equal plane, the opportunity exists for a real trust to develop between the students and the teacher.

6. We developed a national current events assessment exam to be used by teachers on a monthly basis. We call this the NewzBrain Monthly Challenge. The goal is for self and cooperative learning to be used without teacher preparation. The league is student driven using integrated language arts and social studies study skills. The raw scores are used as a benchmark grade and the results are entered into state and national contest. The goal for the students is to better their scores each month, leading them to pay more attention to the news events of the day.

I sincerely hope you join our family of NewzBrain schools across America!!