A student representing Harter Middle School received a perfect score in the first of three meets in this year’s WordMasters ChallengeTM—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually.
Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters ChallengeTM, Harter student Erin earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge! Nationally, only 51 eighth graders achieved this result. Other students from Harter Middle School who achieved outstanding results in the meet include Jimmy, Katilyn, and Aiden.
The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters ChallengeTM by Kerri Jass, Marisa
Nichols, and Kari Pitstick.
The WordMasters ChallengeTM 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 ChallengeTM 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 ChallengeTM 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.
Commitment Connection: Proficiency Based Progress