News Releases
District 15 Students Win High Honors in WordMasters Challenge
Teams from two District 15 elementary schools—Stuart R. Paddock and Hunting Ridge—recently took high honors nationally WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition.
WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking which introduces students to difficult new words, then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of relationships. More than 225,000 students compete annually in three meets during the course of the school year.
A team of fourth-grade students from Stuart R. Paddock School, competing in the difficult Blue Division of the Challenge, won second place in the nation from among 724 school teams in the same level and division. In addition five of the school’s students won highest honors for individual achievement: Samantha Bartolai, Brian Burton, Elizabeth Davies, Amanda Engel, and Alec Stadler were among just 125 fourth graders nationally to earn perfect scores in the meet. Other Paddock students who also achieved outstanding results were Laura Gleason, Jessie Hedrick, Brenna Johnson, Caitlyn Pagenkopf, Emily Pinderski, Jessica Qian, David Blanchette, Alyssa Froehling, and Drew Larson. Teacher Kathleen Cochrane coached the Paddock team.
Two teams from Hunting Ridge competed. The school’s fourth-grade team, coached by teacher Linda Marie Parr, tied for fourth place nationally among 724 school teams participating in the difficult Blue Division. The school’s sixth-grade team, supervised by teacher Marcia Rydquist, placed tenth in the nation among 436 competing teams. Six Hunting Ridge students earned perfect scores: fourth graders Kendall Gaspari, Andrew Marturano, Jimmy Tang, and Elizabeth Tokarz, and sixth-graders Haley Shoaf and C.J. Zara were among just 44 sixth-graders to achieve this outstanding result. Other Hunting Ridge students who also achieved outstanding results were third graders Sam Corzine and Allie Oakes; fourth graders Matt Isola, Katie Iuorio, Ben Lewis, Krystyna Lopez, Danny Gbur, and Holly Gui; fifth graders Randy Comstock, Jonathan Glazer, Michael O’Connor, Erik Savitt, and Ria Vaidya; and sixth graders Danielle DiSilvestro, Jacqui Geringer, and Nikhi Kanneganti.
The teams will participate in two more meets during the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in June to those who achieve and/or improve the most in the course of the year.
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