04/15/2026
April 19th Nevada MO Rotary was energized by listening about the Middle School’s Accelerated Social Studies students tell about their competition experiences so far. Briley Warner, Kailey Keys, Paislie Estes, Quinton Fast, Sutton Meyer, and Carter Hooe, plus instructor, award winning, 22 year teacher, Kim Greer shared the work that goes into their projects as they prepare for state competition. One of them won 3rd place in the state Elks competitions. They also have one high school student who qualified to go to state.
The chose their projects, researched facts, wrote papers, learned about writing bibliographies (which normally would not happen until high school). The competition is usually very tough, with students from not only public schools, but also from private schools throughout the southwest region. They could qualify for the national level of competition. Out of the past 10 years that Nevada Middle School has participated in the competition, Nevada has had students go on to nationals in College Park, Maryland (Washington DC) in June.
Part of their research has included a trip to Ft. Scott to the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes, national cemetery, Gordon Parks museum, and finally, a visit to the Fort. A great relationship with the local Cottey College library has been available for the students’ research efforts.
Each student gave a brief summary of their efforts. Topics included the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, which was for Native American youngsters in an effort to make them un-Indians….a terrible part of America’s history. Part of their reasoning was the students all like football and the Carlisle School has had students excell at football. Once their papers are written, students have to memorize the script for presentation. It was difficult to convey the connection of football to the school. The three young men centered their project on Jim Thorpe, who played football for Carlisle and later went on to the Olympics.
The performances could be up to ten minutes, and the closer to the maximum time, the better it is for scoring their presentation. They worked on their presentation for “a long time”, but when timed, discovered it was only three minutes long. Back to the drawing board to flesh out more details.
The young ladies covered the topic of women’s activist groups that had effective opposition to topics in the past. Revolution, Reaction, Rewards was the theme for their topic choice. They thought the topic had not been covered with the exception of the 19th amendment. Since they were both curious about the topic and how little was known about it, they wanted to know more. They researched people like Shirley Chism, the first African American woman to run for a major political office. They thought preparing the “board” for their presentation was the hardest part since the requirements were so restrictive and finding the best words to use to tie the facts together and reinforce the theme was tough. The limit was 1,000 words on a board 6’ tall, 40” deep and about 50” wide. The students had to build their boards and give a brief summary of their projects for the judging team, as well as their justification for choosing it, doing the bibliography, and the process paper story.
Kailey Keys reviewed her choice of Constantinople for a topic. Her exhibit board was divided into the Ottoman period since he was the one who decided to attach Constantinople. The middle section covered the battle period of 52 days. The final section covered the leadership of Constantinople since there was journals with his mostly neutral writings on the battle.
Kailey liked that they are allowed to use as many quotes as they wish since they aren’t counted in the 500 word restriction. The hardest part for her was deciding how to cover the revolution that happened in the 1450s. Kailey also created a diorama of the battle as part of her project which she took from a painting scene she found that showed the disproportionate number of soldiers battling against Constantinople relative small force.
(Students must use primary sources such as pictures, letters, diaries (video tapes) while secondary sources are analysis,biographies, articles that are created by someone who didn’t experience the event themselves.)
Great program. Rotarians will be anxious to hear how the students do at the state competition.
