In recognition of their outstanding writing skills, six secondary students have been selected as winners in the 2016 National Council of Teachers of English writing contests.

Ward Melville High School juniors Kirti Nath and Michal Zadok were honored in the NCTE’s Achievement Awards in Writing Program while P.J. Gelinas Junior High School eighth-graders Sydney Korsen, Natalia Newton and Anushka Rajagopalan, as well as R.C. Murphy Junior High School eighth-grader Karen Xie, earned recognition in the Promising Young Writers Program.

For the contests, each student submitted two pieces of writing, which were evaluated by national judges on content, purpose, audience, tone, word choice, organization, development and style. Each winner received a certificate of recognition. Nationwide, 264 high school juniors were selected from a pool of 533 nominees for recognition for outstanding writing and 122 eighth-graders were selected to be honored from a pool of 159 candidates.