A student representing Lansing Middle School recently received a perfect score in the first of three meets for this year's WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually.

school wordmaster 02Hazel Thomas (6th), top photo. Lower photo left to right: Logan McDonald (7th), Hana Thibault (7th), Teresa Garcia (8th), Arista Rutherford-Reed (8), Jack Collins(7th-perfect score), Elliott Green (7th))

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, seventh grader Jack Collins earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet.  Nationally, only 20 seventh graders achieved a perfect score.  Other students at Lansing Middle School who achieved outstanding results in the first meet include Hazel Thomas, Elliott Green, Logan McDonald, Hana Thibault, Teresa Garcia and Arista Rutherford-Reed each scoring 19.  The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by Cathy Moseley.

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.

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