A team representing Northpoint Elementary School achieved Highest Honors in the recent WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. The fourth grade team scored an impressive 192 points out of a possible 200 in the first of three meets this year, placing second in the nation!  

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, fourth graders Cameron Herman, Felix Zhang, Andy Chen and Judy Davis each earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 50 fourth graders achieved this result.

Other students from Northpoint Elementary School who achieved outstanding results in the meet include third grader Sydney Knipp and fourth graders Evelyn Shrout, Jayden Wang, Chris Chapple, and Lydia Frischknecht. The students are coached by Mrs. Jenny Doms.

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. 

As for preparation, the students study definitions, synonyms, and antonyms.  They use the words when writing personal narratives, persuasive essays, and expository essays.  Many different analogy questions are posed in the classroom so the students become familiar to all the different angles of analogies.  They also make up possible analogy questions using the words, and all the children in the class have an opportunity to solve those problems.

Teacher-coach Mrs. Jenny Doms says, “I am so proud of these children!”  She adds, “Every day I try to model my love of learning in hopes that the children will take after me to make their love of learning stronger.  The children know that this is a higher level challenge, so I encourage them to push themselves to be the best they can be. 

“Our theme for the year is ‘Breaking Boundaries’ and we talk daily about the many ways to be the 'X' factor. . .the child who thinks outside the box and is able to break those boundaries.  I put this competition into that arena by tasking the children to do more than they imagine possible.  In the end, it is the students working with the words that leads them to understand so fully.  It is a very challenging competition.”

The next meet will be held on February 18th, followed by a third later in the spring.  We wish these Northpoint “word masters” the best of luck!