Paris ISD recently earned Highest Honors in the 2022-2023 WordMasters Challenge™

Photo L to R – Seth Loza, Anniston Bray and Everett Hernandez 

A team representing Paris Independent School District recently earned the Highest Honors in the 2022-2023 WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually. The fourth-grade team scored an impressive 180 points out of a possible 200 in the last of three meets this year, placing ninth in the nation.

 Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, third grader Seth Loza and fourth graders Anniston Bray and Everett Hernandez each earned a perfect score of 20 in the recent meet. Nationally, only 20 third graders and 40 fourth graders achieved this result. Other students at Paris ISD who achieved outstanding results in the last meet of the year include fourth grader Onas Bridges and sixth grader Reed Hartman.

Third grader Seth Loza also earned Individual Highest Honors in the overall competition with a cumulative score of 57 out of a possible 60 points. Highest Honors are reserved for students who place among the top 10-15 students in their division.

The students were coached in preparation for the WordMasters Challenge™ by Tammy King-3 rd /4th Socrates and Romy Zimmerman-5 th /6th Socrates.

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 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