Máximo Gómez School Wins First Place in Third Annual Story Telling Contest

Máximo Gómez School Wins First Place in Third Annual Story Telling Contest
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 5/5/2012

More than 400 middle and high school students between the ages of 13 and 18 participated in this storytelling contest that began in February. The goal of the contest is to motivate young people to read and to take part in healthy competition.

The auditorium of the Mauricio Báez Cultural Center was the venue for the opening of the contest. The orators told their stories in front of a jury who awarded points to the four groups of contestants who accumulated the required number of points in the evaluation exams taken during the lead-up to the competition.

After two months of intense reading and taking exams, the grand finale of the III edition of the contest got underway at the Children´s Library of the Dominican Republic (BIJRD in Spanish) – the long-awaited “Battle of the Story Tellers.”

The auditorium of the Mauricio Báez Cultural Center was the venue for the opening of the contest. The orators told their stories in front of a jury who awarded points to the four groups of contestants who accumulated the required number of points in the evaluation exams taken during the lead-up to the competition.

Out of a total of 120 groups, each with four participants, the finalists were students from the following schools: Máximo Gómez, Domingo Savio Fe and Alegría Education Center and the Union Pan-American Technical Institute.
 
In the end, Shadel Almánzar, Leidy Pérez, Freiter Montero and Ezequiel Santana, from Máximo Gómez School won first prize. Fior Cárdenas, Gloris Pérez, Verónica García nd Lenny Matos, of the Union Pan-American Technical Institute took second place and Elizabeth Alcántara, Juan Manuel Cabrera, Logi Mejía and Junior Reyes, won third prize. Fourth place went to Mabel Matos, Gissel Duran, Massiel Martínez and Johanna Montero.

The winners answered six questions about the plots of the stories they read, the authors, characters and other elements in the stories. Each question was evaluated by the jury, which gave points based on the students´ answers as they chose winners for each of the four winning spots.
 
Authors read by the participating students included Juan Rulfo, Horacio Quiroga, Julio Cortázar, Bioy Casares, Gabriel García Márquez, Aurora Arias, Pedro Peix, Juan Bosch, Armando Almánzar, Jeannette Miller, Marcio Veloz Maggiolo and Luis Martin Gómez.

Contest winners received laptops, digital cameras and iPods in addition to certificates of participation and books.    

Members of the jury were Teresa Peralta, Director of the BIJRD; Dulce Elvira de los Santos, deputy director of the cultural and activity extension of the Library and the Dominican writers, Margarita Luciano and Reynaldo Disla. 

Participating Schools

New Horizons Bilingual School, Republic of Brazil Primary School, the United States of America Junior High, the Republic of Panama, the Colegio San Pio X, the Pilar Constanzo Polytechnic Institute, the Central Evangelical, the Santa Ana Polytechnic and the Logos School, among others.