Edison Intermediate fifth grader Lucas Schmied recently received a perfect score in the third of three meets in this year’s WordMasters ChallengeTM—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. Nationally, only 65 fifth graders achieved this result.
Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters ChallengeTM, Lucas earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. . Fifth grader Dean Colahan also achieved outstanding results in this meet. Joan Grundey coached the students in preparation for the WordMasters ChallengeTM.
More about the WordMasters Challenge:
The WordMasters ChallengeTM is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically. Although most vocabulary enrichment and analogy-solving programs are designed for use by high school students, WordMasters ChallengeTM materials have been specifically created for younger students in grades three through eight. They are particularly well suited for children who are motivated by the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.
The WordMasters ChallengeTM program is administered by a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools. Further information is available at the company’s website: http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com.
Lucas Schmied (gray shirt) and Dan Colahan (red and gray shirt) are pictured.