1/19/2022 -- A team representing Mason Ridge Elementary achieved the highest honors in the recent WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually. The fifth-grade team scored an impressive 188 points out of a possible 200 in the first of three meets this year, placing second in the nation.

Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, third-grader Sarah Adams, fourth-grader Ellie Zhao, and fifth graders Minha Arshad, Kate Reuter and Rosalind Zhu each earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 13 third graders, nine fourth graders, and nine fifth-graders achieved this result. Other students from Mason Ridge Elementary who achieved outstanding results in the meet include fifth-graders Maci Cozad, Harrison Steiner and Sam Swiezynski. The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by Abby Webb.

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.

The WordMasters Challenge™ 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.