Bloom Trail Earns Vocabulary Bowl Success

The Illinois State Vocabulary Bowl Champion for the 2017-2018 school year was Bloom Trail High School, and Samantha Reda, the school's New Division Chair for English, Reading, & Social Studies has her eyes firmly set on getting the prize back.

Since beginning in her position at Bloom Trail in September, Reda has been encouraging students to get involved by creating some friendly competition within the school. “We wanted to find a way to encourage all of our students, regardless of level, to increase their vocabulary in a fun and engaging way,” Reda said.

The Vocabulary Bowl is run through the online vocabulary-building resource, Vocab.com. Students answer questions in multiple formats to learn, reinforce, and master the use of new vocabulary words. The site promotes students learning multiple meanings and uses for different words. Vocabulary development is a critical component of building academic progress: improving reading comprehension and content knowledge across all subject areas.

Bloom Trail—especially its Reading Department—is promoting the use of Vocab.com to the student body throughout the school year. In November, Reda decided to try to up the students’ game, realizing that going into Thanksgiving break Bloom Trail was only a few words out of first place for the month. She quickly came up with a Thanksgiving Challenge for the student body, promising the students who mastered the most words a $25 gift card as a reward.

Over the four-day break, Bloom Trail students mastered just under 1,000 new words and took first place. Junior Alyssa Dymek-Jaworowski earned the top prize for the school. Based on the success of the Thanksgiving Challenge, Bloom Trail made the school-wide competition a regular monthly challenge. In December, sophomore Max Galvan earned top honors. Having mastered a grand total of 4,358 words, Bloom Trail came out on top again.

The combined efforts of staff and students is paying off. So far, Bloom Trail has been the #1 high school in Illinois for both November and December. More recently the school became Halfway Day State Champions, in which students answered 63,622 questions and mastered 3,326 words.

Haley Dettloff a Junior in April Faoro's class was Trail's top student, answering 1,547 questions. Cindy Sowles' Freshmen and Sophomore classes answered 17,978 questions, securing the Top Teacher spot for Sowles.