How to improve Academic Decathlon club?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>Hi, I am Vice-president of my Acadec club at my high school. Academic Decathlon is a team competition wherein students match their intellects with students from other schools. Students are tested in ten categories: Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Science, and Speech. </p>

<p>We get the materials in June/May. Start learning them in September. Competition in Early February. We are open to do summer work.</p>

<p>The past two years we have been meeting once a week. Last year, we made groups were people used PowerPoint to describe the material in these huge packets of material. This was somewhat ineffective and most people didn’t understand it. This year, we had one person lecture the material, but that person normally didn’t know the material that well. </p>

<p>I would like to change the club for the better. What are ways I can improve the club? How do your after-school clubs function? How do you organize everything? How does your Acadec club (if you have one) cover all the material and comprehend it? How do you make it educational, but at the same time enjoyable/fun? Organization tips?</p>

<p>Any advice on how to have a productive after-school club would be appreciated.</p>

2

<p>I just got done with day one of state of Aca Deca actually! :D</p>

<p>But my team meets two days a week. We tend to focus on the super quiz power point and learning how to pull apart the questions. It helps with the tests in general. We focus a lot on the book as well. But one of the biggest things we do is run through our prepped speeches, impromptu speeches, and interviews ALL the time. It helps boost scores a lot if you master those. We have a teacher who has done a lot of research into it and is great. We place decently each year–never made it to nationals, but if you saw the students we work with, you’d understand why :D.</p>

3

<p>I’ve been in an ineffective Academic Decathlon club. This probably offers a different perspective.</p>

<p>I would suggest:

  • more team meetings to built consistent studying (many people strayed from their studying)
  • don’t do lecture style meetings, that’s boring and they’ll forget the info in 30 min
  • more quizzes
  • assign a certain goal (per week/2 weeks) rather than tell them to study that huge packet of stuff.</p>
4

<p>We are trying to get some more varsity members, one of is graduating this year. How do guys get varsity members? At my school anyone with below a 3.0 doesn’t want to do anything related to extracurriculars, especially a academic club. How long are your meetings if you meet twice a week? If you don’t do lecture style, what do you do?</p>