originally posted April 20, 2007
May 2021: reformatted; link updated; text revised as noted
I’ve not watched the new series Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? yet, but I understand it’s turned out to be quite a popular hit. For fun, the Contra Costa Times—as of May 2021, the East Bay Times, a brand of MediaNews Group—in Walnut Creek, California (east of San Francisco and Berkeley), recently asked two fifth-grade teachers to come up with a quiz for its readers.
Their fifteen questions are not difficult, but‚ well, that was a few years ago! See for yourself, and take the quiz (don’t look at the answers accidentally—they’re located at the bottom of that page). The questions came from the regular curriculum, and the teachers revealed that a score of ten would earn a gold star.
I’ll confess to earning only nine!
I’ve always liked silver better, anyway . . .
UPDATE: In general, the on-again, off-again game show took questions from elementary school textbooks—two from each grade level from first to fifth, and a jackpot question from sixth grade. The last iteration of the program aired in 2019. If you dare, try your hand at these sample questions based on the premise:
- from WeHaveKids.com, a list of questions categorized by subject—history, English and literature, geography, science, math, and miscellaneous—and grade level, first through fifth (be careful with the answers: they immediately follow each question);
- from Buzzfeed, a series of multiple-choice questions actually taken from Season 1, Episode 13 of the show (watch, and see an example of how the game was played); and
- from the WashingtonTimes.com website, a sequence of twenty-three fairly difficult questions from various episodes of the program.
image information: Featured image, via promotional materials from FOX and Mark Burnett Productions.
