Woodland celebrates winners of national handwriting contest

    The Woodland Consolidated School was the site for a special assembly on April 14, which saw a number of different honors and awards handed out.
To kick off the assembly those students who made this semester’s Honor Roll were given a certificate acknowledging their achievements. The students were called up one grade level at a time and the K-8 students earning honors and highest honors for the previous ranking period were enthusiastically cheered on by their fellow classmates.
The assembly also included a presentation of this year’s Zaner-Bloser 2014 National Handwriting Contest winners, who earned state-level awards and will now be moving on to the national-level competition.
The Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest is open to all students in grades K-8 and the 2014 event attracted over 300,000 students during its 23rd annual competition. Approximately 3.6 million students have participated in the contest since its inception. Students in grades K-2 submit manuscript (print) entries, while students in grades 3-8 submit cursive handwriting entries.
The contest entries, both manuscript and cursive, are judged according to the Zaner-Bloser Keys to Legibility: shape, size, spacing and slant. Winners are selected from both public and private school categories. State Grade-level winners compete against each other to become one of the 18 national grade-level semifinalists. The 18 national semifinalists compete to be chosen as one of the nine national grade-level champions. Zaner-Bloser awards cash prizes and educational materials, with a combined total value of more than $100,000 to winning students, teachers and schools that participate in the annual contest.
Last year, the Woodland Consolidated School had a state-level winner from all eight grade levels, however, this year the school was only able to achieve that success from seven of the eight grade levels. This years winners include, kindergarten student Carsen Richards, first-grader Aiden Noojin second-grader Jillian Zeigler, third-grader Jasmine Berry, fourth-grader Daniel Arce, fifth-grader Madison Zeigler, sixth-grader Grace Schmitt, seventh-grader Hollie McDougal and eighth-grader Makenzie Conroy.
School librarian Cindy Privette also spoke at the assembly, as part of National Library Week. The assembly ended with Privette announcing that the Reader to Reader Corporation donated enough books to the school that all students were allowed to choose one book to take home and read over the upcoming vacation. Reader to Reader has donated over five million books to support the literacy and library needs of over 500 schools, libraries, shelters and other community groups across the United States.