Collegiate 4th Grade Class Earns Third Place in National Writing Contest

2/2/2018

Collegiate School students in Sonya Smith’s 4th Grade class learned this week that they earned third place honors in a national writing contest.

The ninth annual Mrs. P’s Be-a-Famous Writer Contest invited students to write a story about dragons. The stories were to be no less than 250 words and could not exceed 1,000 words. They could be fiction or nonfiction.

Classes in 16 states entered the contest, with the most entries coming from Texas and New York. The awards were chosen by a panel of celebrity judges that included bestselling author Josh Funk (Dear Dragon and It’s Not Jack and the Beanstalk); Matthew Winner, elementary library media specialist and co-founder of literacy podcast All The Wonders; and Mrs. P (television actress Kathy Kinney).

Members of Mrs. Smith’s class each wrote a story about dragons. The class then voted on their favorite to submit to the contest. They chose to send the story written by Everett McCoy, which was entitled Fly.

The students were excited to show their stories to an authentic audience of famous judges and they worked hard to do their best in order to have their story chosen to represent the class in this contest, Mrs. Smith said.

“Not only did this help with practicing their writing skills, but it was also encouraging to see how genuinely happy the students all were for Everett when his submission was chosen,” she said. “He won, but we all won. Throughout this process, there were multiple opportunities for my students to display our Collegiate core values of Love of Learning, Excellence, Respect, Honor and Community.”

In the coming weeks, the class will receive a goodie box of illustrated books with music CDs as their prize.

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