Q Media Writing Feature Assignment 1 1. Use the following information to write a short feature about an 11-year-old spelling champion. Details: • The focus/angle of your story is how she got interested in spelling and why it is important to her. • Be sure to use AP style. • Correct any AP style errors. Look things up! Don’t assume that everything below is correct style or in the correct order. • Make sure you are writing the quotes using the correct punctuation and attribution to the source. • Use “says” for attribution in this type of feature. • Please double-space. Stephanie Smith is Nebraska's new state spelling bee champ. She was crowned last week. The word she was asked to spell in the 12th round of the spelling bee to win was “poinsettia.” Smith is a 6th-grader at Christ the King grade school and lives at 930 S. 89th St. She said she knew how to correctly spell “poinsettia” because her mother is a florist. "She delivers zillions of them around Christmas," Stephanie tells you. During the Christmas season, Stephanie helps out at Petals, the flower shop her mother, Patricia Smith, owns. Stephanie also tells you that she takes orders over the phone during the holiday season and that many people order poinsettias. "The first orders I took, I totally misspelled the word," Stephanie says. "So my mom told me how to spell it. Boy, am I glad she taught me that!" This is Stephanie's third consecutive spelling bee. Last year, she came in sixth. She said that her goal this year was to finish in the top three. "I didn't have my heart set on winning because I didn't want to be disappointed," she says. "Besides, my dad promised me $50 dollars for finishing in the top three." Stephanie says she's always been good at spelling and enjoys studying and learning new words. When she was just six years old, she asked for and received a dictionary for Christmas. "I used to go through and look at the words because most of them I couldn't read. It was a kids’ dictionary, so it did have pictures and that helped." Now, however, she tries to learn three new words a day. But the real challenge, she says, is figuring out how to use the words. "Sometimes I'll use a word, and my friends won't know what I'm talking about." Stephanie says she wants to have a career in languages, but she doesn't know exactly what she wants to do. She has one brother, who is seven, and one sister, who is 4. Stephanie says she's hopeful her sister will enjoy spelling because her brother is "hopeless," even though her parents have always stressed the importance of good spelling and grammar skills. Stephanie's father, Keith Smith, is a high school English teacher. She says he's always complaining about how poorly high school students spell. "He says they'll be sorry when they're applying for a job and don't get hired because they can't spell," she says. "I don't know -- maybe some kids think spelling is boring, but I just like all the rules about it. And then you have all the exceptions to the spelling rules, which is awesome, too. It's a real challenge to me." She was born in Minnesota, but the family moved to Omaha when Stephanie was two. She has a yellow cat named Pumpkin and a parakeet named Sweet Tweet.