Sayville Student Earns Perfect Score in WordMasters™ Challenge

Congratulations go to Maggie Mongiello, a fourth-grader at Cherry Avenue Elementary School in Sayville, who was one in fifty nationwide to receive a perfect score in the first of three meets for this year’s WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. Maggie earned the perfect score of 20 while competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™. 

Credit goes also to Maggie’s coach at Cherry Avenue, Mrs. Elizabeth Denton, who is one of five teachers at the three elementary schools who prepare the students afterschool as WordMasters Challenge™  Team Leaders.

More Sayville students (see list below) did well overall in the fall competition. Mrs. Katherine Whitehurst, one of the coaches at Lincoln, remarked. “In this world where so many of our communications are abbreviated, it is very rewarding to see these young students taking such an active and challenging role in broadening their vocabulary and knowledge of relationships between words.”

Deserving acknowledgement for their wonderful accomplishments are the following students and coaches:

 Grade 4 - 1st place and perfect score, Maggie Mongiello

                    2^nd place – Chad Moccio & Gene Weng

 Grade 5 – 1^st place Jack Reinhardt

                     2^nd place, Christina Guiffre 

Cherry Ave Coach Elizabeth Denton

Grade 4 -1^st place (tied) Ava Walsh & Will Kretz

                  2^nd place  (tied) Eva Kosack & Elizabeth Bossest

Grade 5 – Top scorers - Emily Hartman & Caroline Crawford

Lincoln Ave Coaches Rita Galvin and Katherine Whitehurst                 

Grade 4 – 1^st place (4 way tie) Evan Como, Kerry O’Donoghue, Reese Skelly, James Gallagher

Grade 5 – 1^st place – Jenny O’Leary

                    2^nd place – Henry Pedisich

Sunrise Coaches Faith Sukoff and Diana Suprenant

Good luck to all in the ongoing WordMasters Challenge™  competitions!!!

PRESS RELEASE INFO

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.