Middletown Students Dubbed U.S. National Finalists of Kids’ Lit Quiz

Contributed article

MIDDLETOWN, CT — Four Woodrow Wilson Middle School students claimed victory Thursday night in the U.S. National Finals of the Kids’ Lit Quiz, an annual international literature quiz open to students age 10-13.

In preliminary rounds, WWMS was described as delivering “a crushing victory” by Quizmaster Wayne Mills. The team continued strong on Thursday night, finishing with an eight-point lead over competitors.

Nora Salo-Markowski, Alex Ren, Bennie Baldwin, and Constantinos Soteriou will travel along with their coach, Maggie Murphy, to Toronto, Canada for a week-long tour beginning June 30. The students will compete against teams from seven different countries in the World Finals during this week.

Constantinos/ Alex/ Nora/ Bennie

While these students have been formally preparing for the competition since the start of the school year, they have been informally preparing since the moment they picked up their first book. Never quite sure which categories or titles will be chosen, students that read far and wide since early childhood have the most success.

The Kids’ Lit Quiz celebrates these passionate readers through “the sport of reading.”

Woodrow Wilson Middle School’s goal in participating in this unique event is to provide young readers with creative space and time to discuss literature, exhibit their personal reading strengths, and develop a questioning stance. We encourage healthy competition and partnership amongst peers and motivate students to deepen their current independent reading practices.

Cathy Kurkijian, USA National coordinator writes, “[T]he Kids’ Lit Quiz™ encourages students to broaden their reading and creates an awareness of genre, authors and titles. The competition is designed to be huge fun, with an element of competition, personal challenge and reward that is seldom available to children whose passion is reading.”

Fundraising events will be forthcoming.

Contributed photos