Students in the Newtown Public Schools Project Challenge program have been recognized for their achievements in the recent WordMasters Challenge.

The event is a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually that consists of three total meets per school year.

Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge, several students from Newtown Public Schools achieved outstanding results in both the second and third meets according to an announcement about the accomplishments.

For the second meet, Reed Intermediate School (RIS) sixth grader Griffin Cameron received a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 22 sixth graders achieved this result.

Other students from Newtown Public Schools who achieved outstanding results in the meet include RIS fifth grader Dylan Loucks, RIS sixth grader Lucas Xu, and Newtown Middle School (NMS) eighth grader Samantha Hoffert.

For the third and final meet, RIS sixth grader Charlotte Lowery earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 26 sixth graders achieved this result.

The other Newtown Public Schools students who achieved outstanding results in the meet include Sandy Hook School (SHS) fourth graders Chase Ibbitson and Austin Rekos, Head O’Meadow (HOM) fourth grader Ellery Tietjen, Loucks, and RIS sixth grader Faye Corcoran.

The students were coached in preparation for the competition by Eric Myhill at RIS and NMS and Kate Magness at SHS and HOM.

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.

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 3-8. 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 wordmasterschallenge.com.