Schools

GCHS Freshmen Win National English Honors

Anna Reilly and Kimberly Lloret earned near-perfect scores in the WordWright Challenge, placing them among the highest 200 ninth graders in the country.

Garden City High School freshmen Anna Reilly and Kimberly Lloret recently won honors in the WordWright Challenge, a national English competition that tests students’ reading comprehension and analysis of texts that range from “short fiction by Eudora Welty or John Updike to poetry as old as Shakespeare’s or as recent as Margaret Atword’s, and to essays as classic as E.B. White’s or as current as a Time Magazine essay by James Poniewozik,” according to a WordWright release.

Both students earned near-perfect scores, placing them among the highest 200 ninth-graders in the country.

“I like writing fictional stories in the mystery and horror genre,” Lloret said. She attributes her love of reading and writing to her middle school English teacher, Elaine Feerick.

Find out what's happening in Garden Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Reilly shared a similar interest in reading and writing fiction, indicating that Laura Connolly, her fifth grade teacher at Stratford who required “an essay or poem every week,” had a tremendous impact on her continued interest.

“We used this program to increase students’ attention to close reading and analysis of a work,” English teacher Catherine Oriani said.

Find out what's happening in Garden Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here