Mineola students win reading challenge
Two Mineola Middle School students have taken the top spots in a national contest for reading the most minutes in a six-week span.
Fifth-graders Joel Thomas and Noah Chang placed first and second nationwide, respectively, in the student contest portion of Rosen-LightSail's Back-to-School Reading Challenge 2019, a competition that tracked the number of minutes students read using the online platform.
Thomas read a total of 5,455 minutes, while Chang read a total of 3,152 minutes, according to Rosen-LightSail. Both won $50 gift cards.
"Not only did Joel and Noah accumulate the most minutes, but they also achieved proficiency on vocabulary challenges with each book read," Mineola assistant principal Amy Trojanowski said. "This deliberate practice and effective effort are the ingredients of what makes a true learner."
Karen Curran's third-grade class at Jackson Avenue Elementary School in Mineola won the Top Class Award in the challenge's class contest portion for averaging 954 minutes read per student. Her class won a $50 gift card for a class party and $100 to spend on additional e-books for their LightSail library.
More than 1.2 million minutes were read nationwide and some 300,000 books completed as part of the contest, Rosen-LightSail said.
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.
