VT Victim Honored at Annandale

A newly commissioned piece of music in honor of Mary Read, Annandale High School graduate who died in the Virginia Tech shootings, will premiere at the Annandale High Spring Band Concert tonight, Thursday, at 7 p.m. The piece includes snippets of the Annandale High fight song, Tech Triumph from Virginia Tech, and parts of “Amazing Grace” and was made possible thanks to the support of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts scholarship program. The Annandale bands will also perform music from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a Glenn Miller medley, Broadway tunes and music from the Beatles.

Students Get Tips at Arena Stage

Juniors in the Annandale High School International Baccalaureate program attended a matinee performance of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at Arena Stage and earned accolades from the cast and senior dramaturge of Arena Stage during a special after-performance workshop. The students asked questions that elicited contemplation, deliberation and passion in the replies and comments from the professional cast and staff members. The professionals were impressed that the Annandale students had not studied the play prior to the performance but were still able to insightfully and accurately react to, analyze, and evaluate what they had witnessed. They received compliments on the quality of their questions, their discernment and erudition about the dialogue, the characters, the staging and the actors’ craft and received applause from the cast, staff members and other workshop attendees.

Barbrow Wins Best Practices Award

Colin Powell Elementary School web curator Rhapsody Barbrow has been awarded the FCPS Best Practices Award for May for her work on the school web site. Barbrow was cited for excellent adaptation of the elementary school template, which can be seen by visiting https://www.fcps.edu/powelles. Awards are presented monthly during the nine-month school year.

Fifth-Grader to Checkmate for U.S.

Jeevan Karamsetty, a fifth grade student at Oak Hill Elementary School, has been named to the U.S. team for the World Youth Chess Championship to be held in Vietnam in October. Karamsetty, along with five other students from the U.S., will compete in the U-10 boys section of the competition. He qualified for the tournament by being one of the three highest rated candidates in his age group in the country. Karamsetty has been playing chess for five years and has won national and several state chess titles. More than 100 countries are expected to send teams to the competition.

HS Students Makes Splash in Art Competition

Oakton High School student Isabelle Yun won first place in the 11th District category of the Congressional Art Competition, and Stuart High School student Thomas Lau won first place in the 8th District category, both sponsored by the Arts Council of Fairfax County. Taking second place in the 11th District competition was Mike Crampton of Pimmit Hills Alternative High School. Third place winner was Amanda Schmick of West Potomac High School. Second place winner in the 8th District was Yeomin Kim of McLean High School. The students’ artwork is currently on exhibit at the Verizon Gallery on the Northern Virginia Community College Annandale Campus.

Sunrise Valley Competes in Chess

Nine Sunrise Valley Elementary School students were among the 2,500 students competing in the 2008 National Burt Lerner Elementary K-6 Chess Championship last weekend. The following team members played seven rounds of chess in three days: Shicheng Zhao, Shirley Burt, Annika Lee, Paul Tudan, Oliver Gainer, Jarret Lee, Nikhil Ramachandran, Shiling Zhao and Nitin Ramanchandran.

Chantilly Continues Winning Streak

Chantilly High School has won its fourth Wachovia Cup for Academics in five years and its ninth cup in the 18 years the cup has been awarded by the Virginia High School League (VHSL). Winners of the Wachovia Cup are determined by a point system based on performance in VHSL state competitions. Schools earn academic activity points for outstanding participation in scholastic bowl, creative writing, theater, forensics, debate, newspaper, yearbook and magazine.

Chantilly earned top honors in all three VHSL publications programs—newspaper, magazine and yearbook—and finished second in creative writing and third in debate. Among other Fairfax County public schools, Oakton High School finished in 4th place, Woodson High School was the 5th place finisher, Westfield High School finished 7th, Hayfield Secondary School was 8th, West Springfield High School was 10th, and McLean High School tied for 11th place.

Over 2,000 Take on Science Olympiad

Students from Langley High School and Longfellow Middle School will compete in the 24th annual Science Olympiad National Tournament to be held May 30 and 31 at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C. Both schools qualified for the national tournament after winning their respective divisions in the Virginia State Science Olympiad. Over 2,000 middle and high school students and their teachers from 46 states are expected to gather at GWU to take part in the interscholastic academic competition.

Students participating in the tournament from Langley High School include Arthur Han, Kevin Kennedy, Hwan Kim, Issac Kwon, Stephanie Liao, Matt Nazari, Jin Park, Jon Park, Nathan Park, Samantha Powell, Alison Shin, Amanda Steffy, Tiffany Tsai, Nate Wilson and Victor Yang. Students participating from Longfellow Middle School include Kyle Pyne, Jared Golant, George Liang, Billy Rieger, Ben Rosenblum, Tushar Kamath, Govind Mattay, Sarah Larkworthy, Seiyoung Jang, Graham Schmidt, Alec Brenner, Hope Flaxman, Allen Shi, Zhina Kamali, Lauren Bomgardner, Katie Ho, Katie Hsia, Anton Nekhai, Austin Ralls, Harry Na, Kevin Au, Varun Kumar, Anita Shammee, Joe Lafuria and Sam Hoffman.

Sponsored by GWU and DuPont, the Science Olympiad National Tournament will consist of a series of team events, which students prepare for during the year. The activities, which are aligned with the National Science Standards, are balanced between the various science disciplines of biology, earth science, chemistry, physics, and technology and require knowledge of science concepts, process skills, and science applications.