MORGANTOWN – If you can read, so goes the old adage in education, you can learn.
Teachers love to impart that.
Get an English teacher into the mix, though, and watch how that bit of classroom wisdom turns itself around, in a wondrous way.
They prefer saying that if you can write, you can read – and in that order.
“Writing,” as in short stories.
Essays, nonfiction and memoirs, too.
Anything with a narrative, really.
The annual West Virginia Young Writers Contest is back on, and a group of budding authors from Monongalia County Schools have turned the page for a go at the top prize.
Marshall University’s Central West Virginia Writing Project has been hosting the wordsmithing event since 1984 for students from the elementary grades to high school.
Mon’s first-place winners:
Fiona Berardinelli, 2nd grade, Ridgedale Elementary, for “Enzo Day.”
Saanvi Srivastava, 4th grade, Suncrest Elementary, for “The Question That Changed Everything.”
Konner McCourt, 5th grade, Mountainview Elementary, for “Town of Glimmerstone.”
Hadley Geist, 7th grade, St. Francis, for “Checkmate.”
Arianna Howell, 10th grade, Morgantown High, for “The Seasons are Changing.”
Evan Stacy, 12th grade, Morgantown High, for “Keys.”
Visit https://www.boe.mono.k12.wv.us for the rundown on all the county winners and their works.
State winners will be notified next week with all first-place finishers invited to West Virginia Young Writers Day May 8 in Charleston.
There are some parameters attached to imagination in the contest.
Word counts for the competition ranged from a maximum of 300 for first- and second-graders and 500 words for those in grades 3 and 4.
Authors in grades 5-8 were governed by an 800-word count, which was stepped up to 1,000 words for the freshmen and sophomore submissions.
Pieces submitted by juniors and seniors were not to exceed 1,200 words.
Ask Richard Gentry what he thinks, and he’ll tell you that word counts are great for structure and discipline.
Of course, the collective narrative weight of those words also count, said Gentry, a former elementary school teacher and college professor who went on to earn international accolades as a researcher in early literacy issues.
The act of writing creatively, he said, is a brain-boon to elementary students in the younger grades, especially.
Narrative synapses are formed – as he explained in a recent blog in Psychology Today with Steve Peha, another researcher in childhood literacy – when a young charge with a crayon or a pencil begins picturing words while hearing them at the same time.
It’s called the Alphabetic Principle.
For kindergarteners and first-graders, words are sounds, which take the form of letters.
They hear it, and they begin to associate the sound with the letter.
“At a time when kids’ brainpower is growing extremely rapidly, writing may be the best single brain workout they can get,” the authors said.
There’s the under-construction reading skill, they note.
Plus, the math, science and motor skills involved in getting those words down.
“Even some emotional intelligence as well — when they begin to consider writing for an audience.”
