What is Science Olympiad?
North Carolina Science Olympiad (NCSO) is a nonprofit organization with the mission to attract and retain the pool of K-12 students entering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees and careers in North Carolina. Every year NCSO hosts tournaments on university, community college, and public school campuses across the state. These tournaments are rigorous academic interscholastic competitions that consist of a series of different hands-on, interactive, challenging and inquiry-based events that are well balanced between the various disciplines of biology, earth science, environmental science, chemistry, physics, engineering and technology. The challenging and self-motivating events of the NCSO align with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study as well as the National Science Education Standards. The events are designed to enhance and strengthen both science content and process skills. (Adapted from www.sciencenc.org)
For more information and to review the events for this year, please visit www.sciencenc.org and select Division A – Grades 3-6.

Who is running it and when? What costs are involved?
This is GPEs 3rd year participating in NC Science Olympiad and we have been blessed with some wonderful GPE teachers who have volunteered to coach, but….we will still need parent coaches. There will be 18 different events this year requiring coaches. Please consider coaching – it is fun and VERY rewarding.
We will meet every Tuesday we are in school from 3:00-4:15 p.m., starting October 8th. The competition is scheduled for April 4th, 2020 from 7:45 am – 2:15 pm at Alamance Community College. This club takes a lot of hard work, dedication and time commitment. We need students to be at every meeting and stay the whole day at the competition at ACC in April. You will also need to practice on your own at home by studying and perfecting your event!

Who can join and where can I sign up?
Any student can apply to be part of the team if they are in grades 3-5. We are limited to 1 team of 18 students, but we welcome students to join and do our afterschool challenges as part of the STEAM Team.  You will receive a schedule for monthly meetings with the whole team – other meetings will be scheduled with your event coaches as needed.  If you are unable to attend a meeting, please let your coach know as soon as possible – too many absences will hurt your team, so try to be there for every practice session.

Questions?
Contact:  Karen_McAvinney@abss.k12.nc.us or Margaret_Lenhart@abss.k12.nc.us or call 336-570-6115 and leave a message for one of us to call you back.