Schools
WHS Ties for 3rd Place in National WordWright Challenge
Students recognized for outstanding achievement.
A team of Wall High School students recently represented the district in this year’s WordWright Challenge, a national competition for high school students which requires close reading and analysis of various forms of prose and poetry. Competing against 647 teams from across the nation, Wall High School’s 10th grade students tied for third place in the nation among all teams competing at this grade level. They analyzed a short story by author John Galsworthy.
Students recognized for their outstanding achievement included freshman Fiona Gill and sophomores Riley Adam, Joshua Cross, Montana Dobrovich-Fago, Alexandra Fenton, Sean Kiewe, Sky Lin, Daniel O’ Sullivan, Grace Puharic, Nikki Russo. Morgan Sachs, and Sean White. The students were supervised by Dr.Tracy Skinner, instructed by English Language Arts WordWright teacher, Kristin Barclay, and mentored by Robyn Dyba, Claire Judge, and Rachel Miller.
The premise behind the WordWright Challenge is that attentive reading and sensitivity to language are among the most important skills students acquire in school. The Challenge is a classroom activity that requires students to analyze texts ranging from short fiction, to poetry and essays. The questions posed by the WordWright Challenge ask students to recognize both the emotional and/or rational logic of a piece of writing, in order to identify the ways in which a writer’s style shapes and shades his/her meaning. More than 65,000 students participated in this year’s fourth and final meet. Medals and certificates will be presented to students who achieved and/or progressed the most throughout the course of the school year.
