Katonah Residents Earn Highest Honors in RA's WordMasters Challenge™

RA Students Earn Highest Honors in WordMasters Challenge™

A team representing Ridgefield Academy recently earned Highest Honors in the 2019-2020 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually. The Grade 8 team scored an impressive 186 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing ninth in the nation.

The eighth graders also placed eighth nationally in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 570 points out of a possible 600. Additionally, the Grade 6 team from Ridgefield Academy finished in tenth place nationwide with a total score of 539 points.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, sixth grader Linnea Shah-Gustafsson from Putnam Valley, and eighth graders Jodie Frechette of Ridgefield and Henrik Shah-Gustafsson of Putnam Valley, each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 27 sixth graders and 66 eighth graders achieved this result.

Other students at Ridgefield Academy who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include fifth graders Pierce Roc-Sennett of Katonah and Marilyn Sommerville of South Salem, sixth grader from Wilton Sophia Carrington, seventh grader from Ridgefield Lily Archibald, and eighth graders Elizabeth Cobera (South Salem) Campbell Greene (Katonah), Natalie Roc-Sennett (Ridgefield) and Abigail Slocum (Ridgefield).

Sixth graders Sophia Carrington and Linnea Shah-Gustafsson also earned individual Highest Honors in the overall competition, each finishing with a cumulative score of 57 out of a possible 60 points. 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 English teachers Stacy Hynes, Grade 4; Patricia Carrington, Grades 5 and 8; and Donna Coppola, Grades 6 and 7.

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 New Jersey, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools. Further information is available at the company’s website: http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com

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Submitted by Katonah, NY

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