Elementary Writing Contest

Tina Salee has been working diligently with the third and fourth graders at Mill Creek Elementary to participate in the first One Word at a Time writing competition. Each class that participated were given a prompt to write about. All students in each class participated. A team of four judges were picked from the attendees at the last meeting to read and comment on the submissions. Essays will be judged on originality, form, grammar and punctuation, FCAT standards of writing.

From each class we will choose five semi-finalists and from the semi-finalists we will choose 1 first prize, 1 second prize, 1 third prize, and 2 honorable mentions. We will have the semi-finalists re-write a final draft to be displayed on a construction paper frame. These will be displayed at the Kissimmee branch of the Osceola Library on December 21. Jerri Fenton and Tina Sallee (if we get the school's permission) will announce the semi-finalists in the classrooms that participated. Following that we plan to run an announcement in the Osceola Gazette, Osceola Sentinel, and the school district news about the contest. It will announce the awards ceremony at the library on December 21. We will also send out invitations to the participants and their parents.

Friends of the library are donating $50 for the first prize winners. If anyone else wants to donate, we need prizes for the second place, third place. Let's discuss this. Maybe it would be best to give items such as books, tablets, gift certificates especially since we don't have a treasury yet for our group. What do you all think?

On this same note, anyone who wants to volunteer to participate in the awards ceremony, we can use the help. It will be on Thursday, December 21 6:30 p.m. We will need treats, people to give treats, help with set up, people to help give out prizes, people to help design the display board, people to direct participants to the specified area. Any ideas are welcome.

PS we also need a display board to accomodate about 50 - 8 1/2" x 11" pages. If anyone has any idea where we can borrow or rent something, let Jerri know.

Thank you Sara Jane, Susan, Tina for all your help.