A group of Greene County Middle School students recently competed in a battle of wits and reading. 

The Council of Cheesmons went to the Grand Battle in Ames for the Battle of the Books that tested the top middle school teams in the state that qualified on their knowledge on 15 books that were selected from the Iowa Teen Award. Advisor Jennifer Powers says the team did really well maintaining their score to be in the upper half of the two preliminary rounds and answering questions based on all 15 books. 

Powers points out that the students did equally as well in the championship round that focused on one book, “Mascot” by Traci Sorell and Charles Waters. She states that while they didn’t get in the top four the students worked really hard answering questions where there was 30-seconds to answer for each question. 

One of the students, Ethan Daniel, talked about how you don’t need a lot of literacy skills to be a part of the team.

“Well, there’s lots of important parts to it like you have to learn how to memorize it (all of the books), you know everyone has to work together for it. And it’s not all reading, and we have lots of times, and if you’re just not very good at it (reading the books) like you can help with other things too. We have to memorize things and whatnot, so yeah.”   

Samantha Pedersen was another student on the team and she described what she enjoyed the most about being a part of the Council of Cheesemons. 

“I would say hanging out with my friends instead of doing IXL, reading intervention, and I also liked reading new books like from genres that I haven’t even thought of reading from. And they  ended up being like really good books.”  

Powers adds that she was impressed with how respectful and kind all of the students were to each other and to other teams. She feels they represented Greene County Middle School very well. Along with Pedersen and Daniel, the other students included Franklin Bauer, Cooper Meythaler and Alyvia Robison and Eli Dearborn.