Fawn Hollow Writers' Adventures Earn $5,000 for Their School

When Fawn Hollow Elementary School third graders Jessica Chapman and Lily Cushing sit down with their writing tablets, they like to let their imaginations run wild.

Jessica's story "Mystery Door" follows the adventures of friends who become lost on their class trip and find a door in a tree leading to a magical world with witches and goblins.

Lily stars in her story "Shrinkie, Dinkie Cereal".

"I woke up in the morning and ate a new cereal and I shrunk down and I had to tell about the adventure I had," said Lily.

"Didn't you ride on your dog?" asked Lily's teacher, Judi Ieronimo.

"Yes," Lily replied.

"And you slept in your dollhouse," Jessica added.

"Yes I did," Lily said with a smile.

Both girls' stories were finalists in the McGraw Hill National SRA Reading Labs Student Writing Contest and Jessica's story won in the K-3 Adventure category.

Ieronimo said Jessica's win earned Fawn Hollow $5,000 worth of supplies, software and iPads for its reading classroom from McGraw Hill and Jessica's writing will be featured in some of its materials.

Jessica said, "We wanted a tie! It was unfair."

"Then we could have won twice as much," Lily added.

Ieronimo is proud of her two students. Of 500 young writers entering the national contest only 36 were finalists.

"I'm just amazed," she said of two students from the same class making the finals.

Ieronimo' class has writing days when children spend the entire day writing in their notebooks, which are decorated with photos and stickers.

"I tell them to write what they know about," Ieronimo said. "If they don't, they can get stuck."

"I wrote 20 poems with my friends Ella, Maggie and Amber," Jessica said.