Welcome to Georgia Public Broadcasting.
We are so excited to have you guys here today.
We have all 16 winners and their families here with us today, so let's give them a big
round of applause to that.
I'm the Director of Education here at Georgia Public Broadcasting and this writers contest
is absolutely one of my favorite days of the year.
And one of my team's favorite day's of the year, where we get to celebrate all things
that have to do with creativity and imagination and writing.
I'm a former English/Language Arts teacher and so this is a big day for me because I
get to kinda dip my toe back into writing and literature and storytelling.
Really excited to spotlight our winners today.
I first want to give a thanks to our judges of the Writers Contest: Georgia State University's
College of Education; the Governor's Office of Student Achievement; Children's Museum
of Atlanta; Georgia Public Library Service; Georgia Department of Education; and Georgia
Family Connection Partnership.
All of these partner organizations helped us with their time and helping us judge all
these wonderful stories.
We had over 350 stories submitted this year, which was a record for us.
And so you guys, the 16 here today, you have been selected out of a big group of stories
and a lot of really good stories.
I also want to give a special thanks to the Center for Puppetry Arts who did a great job
helping our kids make puppets today and also Mamma Koku who does an amazing job with her
storytelling.
Let's give them both a big round of applause as well.
So, let's get to giving out some awards!
As I said, this is a great initiative for us here at GPB.
Our mission is lifelong learning, and that begins with our smallest, tiniest learners
and goes all the way through our adult learners.
We want to start children small, making sure that they are using their imagination and
creativity and also using their engineering and design thinking, and critical thinking,
and problem solving.
And then that that carries them all the way through adulthood and that is truly at the
heart of our mission here at GPB and that is what me and my education team work on every
day.
I just want to introduce them really quickly.
This is Ashley Payton, our early learning specialist.
Kimberly Mobley, who is the newest member of our team.
Mary Anne Lane back here.
Anita McGee over here.
And back in the very back, we've got Jonathan Reedy, and Amy Cooper, and Glo Camacho, and
Ashley Porter.
So we've got a great team and all of us, our main focus here is education.
And so we love what we do, we love supporting teachers and students and learning.
And so we're glad to be here and glad to celebrate our writers.
So without further ado, I know we're all excited to see our winners today, so let's present
the 2019 winners of our PBS KIDS Writers Contest!
I'm gonna start with our STEAM winners.
These are stories that really stood out to our judges as incorporating science, technology,
engineering, arts, and mathematics.
So these all had to have some element of that in their story and really stand out to our
judges in those areas.
So, let me introduce our STEAM award for kindergarten is Varsha Nataraj.
Varsha's story was called "My Snow Day."
Families, we're going to send you a link to all these photos after the ceremony today.
Yay, Varsha!
Just in the spirit of STEAM-ness, I have to read one quote from Varsha's story.
"Science is the best.
Science is fun, exciting, and magical.
I love science.
I want to become a scientist.
What do you want to be?"
All right, our STEAM award for first grade, Vikhyat Konchada.
Vikhyat's story was called "The Tarantula and Leaf-Cutter Ants."
All right, our STEAM award for second grade is Riya Nambiar.
The name of Riya's story was "Kit's Discovery."
And in it, Kit discovers that she loves science!
And our third grade award for STEAM is Elijah Paulus.
The name of Elijah's story was "Ferrous' Big Adventure."
And I learned a lot about turner cubes in Elijah's story that I did not know.
All right, let's get our kindergarten winners.
Our third place winner in kindergarten is Emily Anand.
The name of Emily's story was "When the Crocodile Got Eaten," and it was very suspenseful.
Our second place winner for kindergarten is Damia Williams.
The name of Damia's story was "The Firefighter and the Doctor," who became unlikely friends.
And
our first place winner for kindergarten is David Gomez.
His story was called "Inside My Mommy's Body," where he took an adventure inside her body.
All right, our first grade winners.
Our first grade third place winner is Mina Bella Scruggs.
Mina Bella's story was called "Casey's Mission," and it involved space.
Our first grade second place winner is Orrin Maggiano.
Orrin's story was called "The Confused One," and it was also suspenseful.
And our first grade first place winner is a repeat winner in our PBS KIDS Writers Contest,
Ella Graddy.
The name of her story was "The Mystery of the Missing High Heels."
Oops, I forgot to change the slide for Ella.
All right, our second grade winners.
Our second grade third place winner is Summer Sapp.
The name of Summer's story was "The Girl, a Witch, and a Unicorn."
Our second grade second place winner is Matthew JuBeark.
The name of Matthew's story was "Adventures of Squirrel Lady and Nut Boy: Pumpkin's Revenge."
And our second grade first place winner is Manya Argowal.
Manya's also a repeating winner of our PBS KIDS Writers Contest.
And the name of her story was "Amber and the Cherry Disaster."
All right, last but not least is our third grade winners.
Our third grade third place winner is Craig Collier.
Oh, the name of Craig's story was "Where Did the Palm Trees Go?"
Our third grade second place winner is Randson Thompson.
The name of Randon's story was "The Number Zero."
Can anybody guess what his was about?
Math!
And
last but not least, our third grade first place winner this year is Timothy Makaroff.
Timothy's story was called "The Space Adventure," and it truly was a space adventure.
All right, let's just give a big round of applause for all of the winners of our Writers
Contest.
As somebody who has tried to write, I know how hard it is.
And I just commend every one of these winners today for sitting down and putting pencil
to paper and coming up with an original story because it's very hard sometimes to write.
And so I encourage them to keep writing and if you're in kindergarten, first, or second
grade, I encourage you to start thinking about your story for next year and enter our contest
again.
As you see, we've got two repeat winners here so you can always win next year too.
So congrats, winners.
Families, I'll be following up with emails when all of our stuff gets posted.
We'll send you a link to look at the pictures from today's event.
Right immediately when we're done, we're gonna take group photos of the winners.
We're gonna start with our STEAM winners.
So if you are a STEAM award recipient, you're gonna go over to the red carpet.
And we'll do kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade winners after that.
And that's it for today after we get pictures.
That's all we have.
Thank you so much for coming.