A few weeks ago, students at PJH competed in the district UIL meet hosted in Ponder. Students from Valley View, Paradise, and Boyd also came to compete. Below is a short summary of each event and results for 8th grade PJH students.

In Social Studies, there are questions pertaining to Texas, US, and World History. Liam Bergara placed 1st scoring 51 points. Taelynn Harrison scored 44 points and came in 4th, Maia Holt scored 28 points and finished in 6th place. Together the 8th grade Ponder Social Studies team placed 1st overall with 123 points. 

 The 8th grade spelling team got first overall in this event with 31 points. The scores and places of all the people in the team are Kennedy Day with 46 points and placed 4th , Brooklyn Estes with 37 points placed 6th , finally John Wallace with 67 points placed 1st.  

Maps, graphs, and charts is created to test skills in locating places on a map and getting data from graphs and charts. For that part we got 3rd place. For the individual placing and points we have Liam Bergara with 197 points and he placed 2nd. Next is Maia Holt who scored 134 points. And last we have Luke Arnold who scored 190 points and got 3rd place. Thanks to everyone’s hard work we as a team placed 2nd              

Mathematics is an event consisting of 50 multiple choice math questions. Ponder won first place with 298 points. Liam Begara got 12 points and placed 2nd. Shawn Tellez got 10 points and placed 3rd. Rylie Rivers got 8 points and placed 4th.

Editorial writing is a UIL event in which the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders can participate in persuasive writing skills. Students must write about a specific point-of-view to the prompt. The editorial team for Ponder scored 18 points and placed second after Paradise who won first. The 8th graders who participated in individual events were Haylee Kropp who scored 6 points and placed 5th, Paisley Smith who scored 12 points and placed second, and Rylie Rivers who competed but did not score any points or any place.  

In Oral Reading the 8th grade students are to read short stories, poems, or a children’s book. Makson Allred got a total score of 8 points, Paisley Smith with 12 points, and Rylie Rivers with 15 points. Ponder won the Oral Reading event with a total of 35 points, Paradise with 16, and Valley View with 4. Rylie Rivers won in all of the 8th grade Oral Reading events.

Ready Writing is where you write a story or letter about both sides of something and then argue about one side then write a persuasive letter about it. Rylie Rivers,Brooklyn Estes, and Maddix Roque all competed in this event. Rylie Rivers got 1st place with 15 points.Brooklyn Estes did not show placing or points. Maddix Roque

got 4th place with 8 points. Overall we got second place with 23 points. Scoring was Valley View 28, Ponder 23, Paradise 4, and Boyd 0. 

The students took a test and tried to get a good score. The students that competed were Liam Bergara with a score of 191 and placing 1st place  and Luke Arnold scored 149 and a placing of 4th place, John Wallace scored 121 and a placing of 6th place, the team score was 461.

The 8th grade calculator team has placed first.In first place was Liam Bergara with 328 points and in 3rd place was Rylie Rivers with 238 points and in 5th place was Chloe Hall with 179 and overall they scored 745 points and placed first

In number sense, students compete to test their ability to make quick mental calculations to make decisions. Together the 8th grade Ponder Number Sense team placed 1st scoring 36 points over all.  Liam Bergara got 3rd place scoring 10 points, Cailtin Ensor got 5th place scoring 6 points, and Shawn Tellez got 2nd place scoring 12 points. 

In listening, contestants will listen to a script take notes as needed, and use their notes to answer 25 multiple choice, true or false and short answer test questions. Maia Holt scored 43 points and placed 4th place, Rylie Rivers scored 46 points and placed 3rd place, and Kyle Perryman scored 47 points and placed 2nd place.

 The UIL Music Memory is a test where they see if they could memorize their music they are given. The way they grade their test is by when they play music for 20 seconds and they have to identify the name of the work and the name of the composer. They are also required to use spelling and punctuation in the test. Jessica placed 2nd and got a score of 65, Areli placed 3rd and got a score of 58,and Lizbeth placed 1st and got a score of 85. The whole team placed 1st with 8 points.