Lockhart Elementary's "Name That Book" team

Six second-graders from Lockhart Elementary School brought home the gold in the HISD K-2 “Name That Book” contest in their second year of competition. Students received medals and certificates for their win.

The annual K-2 competition prepares younger students for upper-level competition, which includes all grade levels and continues through April 17. Each school can enter only one team.

“Name That Book” is an HISD reading incentive program that encourages teamwork and ongoing reading, which is critically important in meeting HISD literacy goals.

“Literacy is a cornerstone issue for HISD,” said district Superintendent Terry Grier in his 2014 State of the Schools address. More specifically, that means that getting every HISD student to read on grade level by third grade is a major priority for the district.

Lockhart’s winning “Name That Book” team members — Arielle Wooten, Matthew Grant, Ryley Carter, Danielle Bush, Natalja Alexander and Chase Adams — are all students in second-grade teacher Jennifer Garza’s class.

“They not only scored a perfect score, but they were also very gracious sports and made sure to congratulate their competitors and other sponsors with hugs and high fives,” said Garza, the “Name That Book” sponsor for Lockhart.

This year’s K-2 “Name That Book” competition required that participating students read 29 books from a pre-selected list. The list includes classic literature as well as contemporary award-winning books representing a variety of genres. Garza’s students read all the books but were only responsible for knowing the content of five or six that each one selected.

This year’s K-2 competition was held March 3-7, with two competitions taking place per day. Lockhart competed March 7, at M.C. Williams Middle School. They competed against seven elementary schools — Horn, Kolter, Twain, The Rice School, Longfellow, Mitchell, and Almeda.

The competition consisted of five rounds with five questions or lines in each round. Teams listened to a line read aloud by the competition’s moderator and then discussed, deliberated, and collectively decided which book the line was from.

Lines from this year’s competition included “He hopped faster;” “This time, everyone believed that she would;” and “She thought about food.” The lines contain no character names or specific clues to help identify the story, so students must memorize all the lines in each book. Lockhart students were able to identify the correct book for every question in all five rounds and won first place with a perfect score of 25.