Lincolnshire Prairie-View School District 103 notes

District geographic bee: Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 will hold its Geographic Bee at 9 a.m. Jan. 9 at Daniel Wright Junior High School, 1370 Riverwoods Road, Lincolnshire.

The district held preliminary rounds earlier this month to determine final round qualifiers for its district-wide competition.

The students who will compete in the district competition are fifth-grader Jonathan Mishory; seventh-graders Aman Ahmed, Jack Cordes, Laura Hefner and Alexandra Naughton; and eighth-graders Garrett Dempsey, David Jin, Vickram Pradham, Andrew Siwabessy and Jeffrey Smith.

The winner of the district Geographic Bee will be eligible for the statewide bee on April 4.

The winning student at the state level will then proceed to Washington D.C. for the National Geographic Bee on May 20 and 21.

Spelling bee finalists: Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 recently held preliminary rounds to determine finalists for its district-wide spelling bee.

The district's spelling bee will begin at 1:15 p.m. Jan. 31 at Daniel Wright Junior High School, 1370 Riverwoods Road, Lincolnshire.

The following are the finalists listed by grade.

Fourth-graders: Kazemi Adachi, Julie Lai, Andrew Lefebvre, Mickey Mannion, Annie Morrison, Jamie Schlacter, Alec Smith, Niveda Tennety, Matthew Treiber and Andy Xu.

Fifth-graders: Michelle Hu, Alex Knerzeric, Alex Kolesky, Jeremy Lan, Jonathan Mishory, Carl Padgott, Chris Song, Jessie Wang, Grace Young and David Zhang.

Sixth-graders: Chad Berryman, David Chen, Jack Gordon, Omkar Kelhar, Michelle Koh, Chris Krebs, Pranathi Merneedi, Sonia Thosar, Tina Tian and Anirudh Viswanathon.

Seventh-graders: Matt Bolman, Rachel Burnett, Jack Cottle, Josh Dou, Garima Gupta, Ryan Malis, Eric Savin, Nigel Siwabessy, Vivian Wang and Erik Wilson.

Eighth-graders: Melinda Choi, Elliot Feeny, Bryan Fleishman, David Jin, Hannah Kay, Matt Kim, Rebecca Muller, Aparna Pal, Andrea Shen and Julia Zanotelli.

The winner of the district's spelling bee will head to the Lake County Sectional competition later this winter.

The winning student at the sectional level will then proceed to Washington D.C. for the National Spelling Bee on May 28 and 29.

Three teachers earn national board certification: Laura Best, Christine Hoover and Lisa Lindell joined more than 500 elementary and secondary school teachers in Illinois to earn national board certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Best is a technology resource teacher at Daniel Wright Junior High School, which serves fifth through eighth grade students.

Hoover teaches fourth grade at Half Day School, which serves third and fourth grades.

Lindell is a first grade teacher at Sprague School, which serves kindergarten through second grade students.

There are now 22 teachers and administrators in District 103 with national board certification. They are:

Sprague: Nancy Brankis, LeeAnn Delli, Kay Handcock, Jill Harper, Elizabeth Hjelm and Lisa Lindell

Half Day School: Courtney Gilkison, Chris Hoover, Heather Santella, Kerry Sweet and Ruth Wilcox

Daniel Wright Junior High: Laura Best, Katie George, Cathy Nasenbeny, Rebecca Nelson, Karina Richter, JoAnne Roler, Sue Traxler, Sue Wotal and Renee Zorc

Among the administrators are Jennifer Able, principal at Half Day School and Jenell Mroz, assistant to director of special services.

National board certification is a voluntary assessment program designed to recognize and reward teachers. While state licensing systems set basic requirements to teach in each state, teachers who have earned national board certification have demonstrated advanced teaching knowledge, skills and practices.

Certification is achieved through a rigorous, performance-based assessment that typically takes one to three years to complete.

Academic excellence award: The Illinois State Board of Education has awarded all three schools in Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 with 2006 Academic Excellence Awards.

Daniel Wright Junior High School, Half Day School and Laura B. Sprague School are among 107 elementary and kindergarten through eighth-grade schools that received the award and were included on the Illinois Honor Roll.

Criteria for a school to earn the Academic Excellence Award includes 90 percent of students meet or exceed standards in both reading and mathematics for at least three consecutive years. Also the school must achieve Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child Left Behind law for two consecutive years.

Derr selected writing judge: Allison Derr, who has taught at Daniel Wright Junior High School for 17 years, has been selected by the National Council of Teachers of English to serve as a judge for its "Promising Young Writers" program.

As a judge for the Promising Young Writers program, she will be evaluating papers submitted by students throughout Illinois.

The program is designed to honor excellence in writing by eighth-grade students from schools in the United States, Canada and American schools abroad.

Teachers give presentation: Staff members Tabatha Otto and Renee Zorc from Daniel Wright Junior High School recently presented at the International Reading Association's Conference in Overland Park, Kan.

Otto and Zorc were selected to present "Nudging the Nonfiction Neurons" at this conference.

They have made similar presentations on this unit of study at the American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C., the Illinois Reading Council Conference in Springfield, the Illinois School Media Library Association Conference in Arlington Heights and the Illinois Gifted and Talented Conference in Chicago.

Otto and Zorc were also honored with an American Association of School Librarians' award for this unit last year.