Larson Middle School sixth grader Vivian Chute has been busy lately – busy hitting the books!  And her efforts have paid off.  She has achieved great success in not one, but two subject areas. 

Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, Larson Middle School sixth grader Vivian Chute earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 31 sixth graders achieved this result.  She received a perfect score in the second of three meets in this year’s national vocabulary competition that involves nearly 150,000 students annually.

Vivi was coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by teachers Joan Grundey, Jannel Kumar, and Vicki Dunlevy.  

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. 

Vivi also has qualified to compete next month in the State Geography Bee after winning Larson Middle School’s Geography Bee in January.  View a video and read a related article by ThisWeek News reporter Alan Froman here: http://www.thisweeknews.com/news/20180326/on-top-of-world.   

The WordMasters Challenge™ program is administered by a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools.  Further information is available at the company’s website: http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com.

Photo credit: Alan Froman, ThisWeek News