Academic Extracurriculars

List of 7 items.

• Competitive Robotics Team

  The Pegasus  Competitive Robotics Team competes  in the VEX EDR division (designed for high school students) of the VEX Robotics Competition, the largest robotics competition in the world. Each year, VEX designs a different engineering challenge, through which our students are tasked with designing, building, and programming an original robot to complete. Students travel to compete with other high school and middle school teams across California.

  
  

  Students  begin working for six weeks during the summer to research, plan, and build  their robots. During the school year, team members continue to work after school to prepare for their tournaments on the weekends. 

  
  

  Teamwork is the key element to success as the students go through the engineering design process to keep improving their robot over the course of this year-long project. The students learn to collaborate with their teammates and to be open to new ideas as they often reconstruct parts of the robot that they may have spent many weeks building. The students gain an understanding about the engineering design process, which is a method of constant prototyping, testing, analyzing the results, and refining the design.

  
  

  Interested students must submit an application, due by the end of February. Students are selected in March based upon teacher recommendations and an interview. The robotics season begins in May.

• Debate Tournaments

  The Pegasus Debate program is recognized as being one of the top in the nation. Many of our seventh- through eighth-grade debate students place in the top 10 during several Orange County debate tournaments, sponsored by the Orange County Debate League (OCDL) and Middle School Debate Program (MSPDP). Since 2011, Pegasus debate students have won Golden Gavel awards, team and individual speaker awards. Many proceed to participate in debate and Model United Nation (MUN) programs in high school.

• Spelling Bees

  Every January, Pegasus hosts a Middle School Spelling Bee, open to students in sixth through eighth grades. Students are chosen based upon their performance in their class spelling bee.
  
  The first through third place winners from the Pegasus Spelling Bee proceed to the Preliminary Written Round of the Orange County Spelling Bee in February, held at the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE), Costa Mesa.
  
  

  Winners from the Written Round compete in the Semi-Final Oral Round.
  
  The winner of the Orange County Spelling Bee wins an all-expense-paid trip to Washington D.C. to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May/June.

• Geography Bees

  In January, selected fourth- through eighth-grade students are given the opportunity to participate in the Pegasus geography bee. The students are chosen to compete after they advanced from their classroom bee. The winner from the Pegasus bee can then proceed to the State Geography Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
  
  The winner of the State Bee proceed to compete in the National Championships held in Washington D.C.

• Math Invitationals

  Each spring, selected Pegasus math student compete in the Sage Hill Annual Mathematics Invitational. The competition is open to  middle school students from independent schools, many of whom do not have other opportunities to compete in mathematics. Students participate in different categories that include: Mental Math, Probability and Statistics, Measurement, Algebra, Geometry, and Engineering.

• National History Day

  In March, students are provided with the opportunity to participate in the National History Day (NHD) competition, held at the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE). The NHD is open to every school district and participating schools in Orange County. 
  
  The OCDE develops a specific historical theme, from which students voluntarily research topics of interest and develop a project. The project is initiated at school, normally during their social studies class. Once selected, they advance to the Orange County contest. Students may compete individually or as a group. Each year, a few Pegasus social studies students win awards in NHD.
  
  

• Orange County Science Fair