RA TEAMS EARN HIGHEST HONORS IN 2022-23 WORDMASTERS CHALLENGE™
At a recent Monday morning assembly, Grades 4-8 students were celebrated for their accomplishments in the WordMasters Challenge.
Several teams representing Ridgefield Academy recently earned Highest Honors in the 2022-2023 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually. The seventh 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. In addition, the fifth grade team scored 189 points to finish in fifth place and the fourth grade team captured ninth place with 180 points. Both the sixth and eighth grades finished the meet in seventh place, with 189 and 184 points, respectively.
Nine RA students earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent Wordmasters Challenge.
The seventh graders also placed sixth nationally in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 528 points out of a possible 600, as did the fifth grade team with a total of 555 points. The fourth grade (536 points) and eighth grade (544 points) teams both finished the overall competition in seventh place. Finally, the sixth grade team earned a total of 539 points to finish tenth nationwide.
Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, the following students each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet: fifth graders Rishabh K., Castine L. and Amelia M.; sixth grader Will B., seventh graders Xavier H., Jackson L., Lily O., and Winston O.; and eighth grader Marilyn S. Nationally, only 59 fifth graders, 56 sixth graders, 32 seventh graders and 60 eighth graders achieved this result.
Other students at Ridgefield Academy who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include: fourth graders Minho C., Ada G., and Trey N.; fifth graders Rosha H., and Leo N.; sixth graders Ash D., Oliver H., Avery K., Austin S., Abby S., Sasha S. and Sasha T.; seventh graders Abigail B., Charlotte C., Noah E., and Mateo G., and eighth graders Penny K., Seminya K., Parker P., and Joey S.
Fourth grader Minho C. also earned Individual Highest Honors in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 59 out of a possible 60 points. Seventh grader Charlotte C. also achieved
Highest Honors with 57 cumulative 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), Jenna Rubin (Grades 5 & 6), and Patricia Carrington (Grades 7 & 8).
About the WordMasters Challenge™
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.
