D-15 Students Excel in WordMasters Competitions

District 15 students accumulated a total of 94 perfect scores in WordMasters Challenge competitions this year.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words, and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically. Though most vocabulary-boosting and analogy-solving activities have been created for high school students, the WordMasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students in the third through eighth grades.

Annually, approximately 220,000 students enter the WordMasters Challenge, competing in three separate meets held at different intervals during the school year. This year, teams of third- and fourth-grade students and fifth- and sixth-grade students from six District 15 schools participated in the Challenge’s very difficult Gold Division.

At the end of all three meets, three District 15 teams ranked among the nation’s top teams in their divisions. At the fourth-grade level, Pleasant Hill School’s team finished in fifth place, and, at the sixth-grade level, Frank C. Whiteley School’s team finished in third place, and Pleasant Hill School’s team finished in sixth place.

Frank C. Whiteley School

At the fourth-grade level, Elia Spyratos, Kate Liu, Andrew Yin, Brent Swenson, and Arnav Batta each earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Justin Ruan and Jerry Zheng earned perfect scores in all three meets, while Pragya Malhotra, George Moe, Allison Nakazawa, and Bethany Sorman earned perfect scores in two meets, and Ruchi Chitgopekar, Paige Dirkes-Jacks, Stephanie Hu, Emma Liu, Thomas Morel, Elizabeth Perez, Tarun Pothanker, Casey Tan, Eric Wong, Kevin Wu, Mabel Zhang, Albert Xu, and Sharon Cheong each earned a perfect score in one meet.

Pleasant Hill School

At the fourth-grade level, Sam Quinn earned perfect scores in two meets, and Maegan Jong, Anoushka Ambavanekar, Sophia Dmytryuk, Duncan Harro, Sean Deangelis, Alex Kim, Katharine Larson, Shreya Mukherjee, Jack Raker, Oleksandra Shashkova, Christina Sieben, Melanie Wang, and Flora Zheng each earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Linfei Li earned perfect scores in all three meets, while Sarah Gonwa, Adam Schyvinck, Michael Rowden, Lauren Kivland, Sydney Valentine, Romil Havewala, Adam Quinn, Jack Hirsch, Jaime Chen, Aastha Agarwal, and Pranav Charkupalli each earned a perfect score in one meet.

Hunting Ridge School

At the fourth-grade level, Jennifer Tischuk earned perfect scores in all three meets, while Lukas Styczen, Matt Corrigan, Sarah Stapleton, Ayushi Balan, and Hannah Lin each earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Aidan Andreas, J.T. Streepy, and Ben Cohen each earned a perfect score in one meet.

Winston Campus Elementary

At the fourth-grade level, Aaron Kleinschmidt, Caleb Bennett, Sathvik Kakanuru, and Kyle Douglas each earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Brandon Steinman earned perfect scores in two meets, while Grace Mathew, Aidan Busch, Radin Marinoff, Danny Rosenburg, and Emily Steinebrey each earned a perfect score in one meet.

Central Road School

At the fourth-grade level, Kaitlin Shin, Ji Won Hyun, and Delaney Gerasta each earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Kashif Javid and Rebecca Mathew earned perfect scores in two meets, and Brooke Harrison earned a perfect score in one meet.

Marion Jordan School

At the fourth-grade level, Chloe Walker earned a perfect score in one meet.

At the sixth-grade level, Kathryn Jefferson and Joseph Zhao each earned a perfect score in one meet.

-Story Submitted by Community Consolidated School District 15