McGrath grade 11 student tops reading competition

TREADWAYS, St Catherine:

Hytasha Barnes, a grade- 11 student at McGrath High School in St Catherine, recently captured first place in the finals of the school’s annual reading competition.

Barnes took control from the outset after she was asked to read a brief summary from a book that they all have read before, and was awarded the most points in grammar, diction, clarity and creativity.

Her comprehension skills were also tested by Jade Tingling, quiz mistress, when she answered all the questions posed to her from the passage in a four-minute session.

Cheyenne Porter, a seventh-grader, was placed second, while grade-10 student Sordia Daley was awarded third place. Aliyah Francis, grade eight, ranked fourth in the competition.

Organiser of the competition for the last two years, teacher/librarian Andrea Bailey, was pleased with the outcome.

“This competition was out of a desire to get our students to read more,” she told The Gleaner.

“Here at McGrath, we don’t get the high GSAT (now PEP) achievers and reading is not a discipline that our students gravitate to, so the competition was born out of that reality,” Bailey noted, adding that the school has seen improvements in English language at the CSEC level since the start of the competition.

According to her, there is also a renewed interest in the use of the library, with students borrowing more books to read.

Barnes told The Gleaner that her English had improved immensely since she started reading more.