West Middle School student, William Pumphrey, has taken the first place prize in this year's Letters About Literature writing contest for Kentucky Level 1(Grades 4-6).

As a state winner, William will receive a $100 Target Gift Card, and his letter has now advanced to national judging.  A panel of national judges will select the national winners on April 24 and they hope to make all announcements on or soon after May 1.  The national prize includes a $500 Target Gift Card plus the student earns the right to nominate a school or community library to receive a $10,000 Letters About Literature Reading Promotion Grant.  How empowering for a child to be able to give this gift to his/her community!

With collaboration between the Language Arts teachers and the Talented and Gifted Resource Teacher, all students in the advanced language arts classes at both East and West Middle Schools wrote a letter to an author of their choice to be entered in the contest.

LAL (Letters About Literature) is a national reading promotion program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, presented in partnership with Target. This year they received 59,000 letters from young readers across the country, of which just under 4,000 advanced to round 3, or state-level judging.  Specific to Kentucky, they received 275 letters on Level 1 of which just 18 advanced to round 3. William’s letter then moved to the top three and finally was the chosen state winner.  He wrote his letter to Wilson Rawls, the author of Where the Red Fern Grows.

Teresa Walther, Talented And Gifted teacher said, “Research has shown that making connections with authors increases a student's engagement with books and reading. While writing to their author, students were engaged in a variety of thinking strategies including activating background knowledge and synthesizing information, as well as, analyzing and evaluating effective writing techniques, idea development and organization to develop an authentic piece of writing.”