COVINGTON, Ga. - Newton County School System students brought home numerous awards from the recent Griffin Regional Educational Service Agency 2018 Regional Literacy Days Poetry Recitation, Ready Writing and Drama Competition.

In the poetry recitation contests, competitors were judged on a number of criteria, including stage presence, articulation, interpretation, memory and accuracy, and difficulty of the piece.

Alainah Jackson of Heard-Mixon Elementary School won first place in the fifth-grade recitation contest with her performance of, “King Hugo’s Huge Ego”and Aurora Gray of Veterans Memorial Middle School won third place in the seventh-grade recitation competition with her performance of, “If You Would Listen.”  

Newton County School System students also earned several awards in the Ready Writing Competition during which students are given a writing prompt and one hour to complete an essay. In the elementary division, Ethan Armendariz from South Salem Elementary School won second place in the third grade competition and Emerson Fry from Mansfield Elementary, took home the third place award in the fourth-grade contest. In the middle school competition, Jaimoni Parker of Newton County Theme School won top honors in the seventh-grade competition.

“The Literacy Days Competition provides students with the opportunity to perform and be recognized for their talents through the celebration of the arts,” Superintendent Samantha Fuhrey said. “I am proud that we had so many winners at the regional competition as it takes a tremendous amount of talent and commitment to participate in this type of competition. They definitely represented their schools and our school system very well.”