Geneva Middle School Students Excel in WordMasters Challenge

A team representing Geneva Middle School South recently earned Highest Honors in the 2015-16 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. The seventh grade team scored an impressive 184 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing fifth in the nation. The seventh graders also placed seventh nationally in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 547 points out of a possible 600.

Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, seventh graders Rachael Sharratt and Shayla Spezzano each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 9 seventh graders achieved this result. Other students at Geneva Middle School South who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include seventh graders Kelly Anderson and Darian Holda. The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by 7th grade Language Arts teacher, Juli Beyer.

The WordMasters Challenge™ 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 Challenge™ 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 Challenge™ 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