Winnetka Students Get Highest Honors At Vocabulary Competition

WINNETKA, IL — Two teams of Winnetka middle school students representing Carleton Washburne School recently earned Highest Honors at a national vocabulary competition.

The District 36 eighth grade team scored an impressive 187 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing first in the nation in the 2016-17 WordMasters Challenge, which involves nearly 150,000 students annually.

Overall, the eighth graders placed third nationally with a cumulative score of 564 points out of a possible 600, while the seventh grade team finished in fifth place with a total of 543 points.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge, eighth graders Abe Chait and Lily Ingram each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 5 eighth graders achieved this result. Other students at Carleton Washburne School who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include seventh grader Ben Pigott and recent eighth grade graduates Connor Caserio, Anna Furton and Christina Pegg.

Seventh grader George Ware and eighth graders Abe Chait and Leah Schmidt also earned individual Highest Honors in the overall competition with cumulative scores of 57, 58 and 57 out of a possible 60 points, respectively. Highest Honors are reserved for students who place among the top 10-15 students in their division.

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 run by an Indianapolis, Indiana company that says it is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools.

» via Winnetka Public Schools District 36

Top photo: 7th Grade Wordmasters Winners from Carleton Washburne School (Courtesy D-36)