A fourth grader in Hawthorne and a sixth grader in Jersey City are regional winners in a national handwriting contest. National winners in the Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest were announced Monday.
Students were judged on how they wrote, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” which uses every letter in the alphabet. Their letters had to meet standards of shape, size, spacing and slant.
Aiden Torrey Lim, a fourth grader at Hawthorne Christian Academy in Hawthorne won the fourth-grade category for the northeast region, covering 14 states.
Fourth graders had to answer what they liked best about handwriting. Aiden replied: “What I like about handwriting are the letters because they are beautiful. Cursive is faster to write than manuscript.”
Anika Jajoo, a student at the Frank R. Conwell Middle School in Jersey City, was the regional sixth-grade champion.
Sixth graders were asked to answer, in their best penmanship, how handwriting makes them a better reader and writer.
Anika replied, “Handwriting makes me a better reader because it introduces me to a world of creativity, with which I can read others’ writing proficiently. Additionally, practicing handwriting makes me much more careful about what I am writing and how I write it.”
For the past 33 years, more than 2.5 million elementary students across the country have submitted samples to the contest, sponsored by Zaner-Bloser, Inc., a Columbus, Ohio company that publishes handwriting, reading, writing, spelling, and vocabulary programs.
According to the company, handwriting is a foundational skill in developing literacy, as it “supports students’ ability to translate ideas into written words and participate in writing tasks in and outside of school.” Recent studies have shown much greater whole-brain engagement during the act of writing by hand, compared to typing.
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Tina Kelley may be reached at tkelley@njadvancemedia.com.
