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Local student receives national honor for WordMasters Challenge
HIDDEN VALLEY LAKE, Calif. – Julianne Carter, a student representing Coyote Valley Elementary School, achieved individual Highest Honors in the recent WordMasters Challenge, a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually.
Competing in the Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge, Julianne achieved a perfect score of 20 on the second of three challenges to be held this school year.
Nationally, only 32 sixth graders achieved this result.
Julianne said her study for the test was fun.
“I look over the list and study the meanings of each word,” she explained. “I look up synonyms, antonyms and various forms of the word that might have different meanings. My family and I have a game we play where we each try to use the word in a story or sentence in as many different ways as possible. It is a game we play when we are in the car.”
Julianne has another WordMasters Challenge test coming up later this month.
“I am excited for the next test,” she said. “It gets harder each time because the words from the last test can also appear on the new test. It is cumulative. Also, this is the first year we are taking the test on the computer. The normal test taking strategies of crossing off the wrong answers and circling the two that you narrow down are not as easy to apply on a computer. I think that will add some challenge to the test.”
Julianne isn't just talented when it comes to language; she's also a gifted musician, who has been accepted to study violin this summer at the renowned Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan: http://bit.ly/1jKrxBc .
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.
For more about the WordMasters Challenge program, visit http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com .