Jamaican Pupil Writes Her Way to the Top

Eleven-year-old Georgia Fisher of Tomlinson Christian Academy in Ocho Rios, Jamaica is the winner of the 2017 Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA) Story Writing Competition.

Georgia’s story, entitled “The Cycle of Life” was unanimously selected as the winning story by the panel of judges. The judges described Georgia’s story as well developed with coherent sub-plots unified by a common theme.

For her literary efforts, Georgia will receive a Kindle E-Reader as her prize. This will be presented to her at the school’s graduation ceremony on Tuesday, 27 June 2017. The ceremony will be held at the RIU Hotel in St Ann, Jamaica. In addition, the winning story, along with the top 15 stories from the competition will be published as eBooks on the CXC website, www.cxc.org.

Some 46 entries were received from pupils in five Participating Countries: Anguilla, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

This was the second CPEA Story Competition hosted by CXC and ran from 2 October 2016 to 31 March 2017. The judging panel comprised seven CPEA teachers from each of the territories who participated in the competition.

The stories were judged based on the following categories: Content (4 marks), Organisation (4 marks), and Language/Expression – words, sentence, structure, paragraph (4 marks). There were no restrictions on the theme of the story. However, the story must be original in nature and should be centered around Caribbean experiences.

The CPEA Story Writing Competition was conceptualised to provide pupils participating in the CPEA with an opportunity to create stories that would be read by a regional audience, according to Dr Carol Granston, Pro Registrar of CXC.

Dr Granston says the aims of the competition were to identify short stories written by pupils that can be used as reading materials by other pupils; provide pupils with an authentic audience for their stories; motivate pupils to write; and provide an avenue to unearth pupils’ writing potential and talent.

A major component of the CPEA involves the use of projects, writing portfolios, journals and book reports to develop pupils’ language literacy skills. As part of their writing tasks, pupils are required to complete various writing tasks including narrative pieces.

The Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment is an assessment of the key literacies required by all pupils exiting the primary school system. The CPEA places a high premium on integrating both formative and summative assessment in teaching and learning.

For further information, please contact Cleveland Sam, Public Information Officer at (246) 227 1892 or via e-mail @ ClSam@cxc.org.

http://www.cxc.org/jamaican-pupil-writes-her-way-to-the-top/

 June 29, 2017