A team representing Nysmith School recently earned Highest Honors in the 2016-17 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. The fourth grade team scored an impressive 193 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing second in the nation. The fourth graders also placed first nationally in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 573 points out of a possible 600.
Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, fourth graders Rabia Chadha, Rishabh Kumaran and Henry Pan each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 35 fourth graders achieved this result. Other students at Nysmith School who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include fourth graders Vivian Bejtlich, Charlotte Gabriel, Aurora Holloway, Ananya Kakayadi, Arielle Kouyoumdjian, Alex Landry, Lindsey Newberg and William Strong.
Fourth graders Rishabh Kumaran and Henry Pan also earned individual Highest Honors in the overall. Rishabh was the only fourth grader in the nation to achieve a perfect score of 60 points in his division. Highest Honors are reserved for students who place among the top 10-15 students in their division.
The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by Aisha Enayatulla.
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