Geneva Middle School Students Place Second in National Vocabulary Competition

Source: Geneva Community Unit School District 304 press release

A team representing Geneva Middle School North recently earned Highest Honors in the 2014-15 WordMasters Challenge -- a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually.

The eighth grade team scored 194 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing second in the nation. The eighth graders also placed third nationally in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 562 points out of a possible 600.

Eighth grader Conor McPheron achieved individual Highest Honors in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 58 out of 60 that placed him among the top ten students nationwide within his division.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge, eighth graders Madeline Herwig, Conor McPheron, Garrett McPheron and Margaret Panizzi each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 30 eighth graders achieved this result.

Other students at Geneva Middle School North who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include eighth graders Amanda Beigel, Andrew Borse, John Michael Easton, Katie Ellis, Ella Harvath, Stephanie Howe and Nicole Walley.

The students were coached in preparation for theWordMasters Challenge by Geneva Middle School North’s 8th grade Language Arts teachers Jessica Bess, Laura Hahn, Natalie Rinaldi, and Kate Ritter.

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.