Several teams representing Ridgefield Academy recently earned Highest Honors in the 2023-2024 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually. The eighth-grade team scored an impressive 185 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing sixth in the nation. In addition, the fifth graders scored 184 points to claim seventh place, the sixth graders finished ninth with 183 points and the seventh grade team scored 181 points to capture eighth place.
Four teams also placed nationally in the overall competition. The fifth-grade and eighth-grade teams both finished in sixth place with cumulative scores of 552 and 517 points (out of a possible 600), respectively. The sixth grade team came in eighth place with 540 points and the seventh grade team captured seventh place with 552 points.
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 grader Ellie B., seventh grader Darragh C., and eighth graders Charlotte C., Xavier H., Carolyn J., and Winston O. Nationally, only 31 fifth graders, 32 seventh graders and 64 eighth graders achieved this result.
Other students at Ridgefield Academy who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include fourth graders Sebastian H. and William R.; fifth graders Max B., Minho C., Joshua E. and Grace S., sixth graders Laila I., Rishabh K., Asher K., Castine L. and Leo N., seventh graders Will B. and Oliver H. and eighth grader Lainey H.
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.
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