Once Again, Kilmer Rocks WordMasters!

Two teams of students representing Kilmer Middle School recently won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition entered by approximately 220,000 students annually.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the Challenge, the school's seventh graders tied for first place in the nation in the year's second meet, held in February, among 294 school teams participating at this level and in this division. At the same time, the school's 8th graders tied for fourth place in the nation among among 302 competing teams.

Seventh graders Vishal Bhasin, Melody Chiang, Alyssa Czaban, Quiana Dang, Ethan Epstein, Heather Hong Fong, Emma Kohm, Jessica Lewis, Nathan Oo, Jordyn Park, Sarina Prasad, Mistaya Smith, Jay Swarup, Andy Tan, Khoi Tran, and Devlin Wesolowski, and eighth graders Kat Hanna, Nikhil Sakhamuri, and Dhriti Vij all earned perfect scores in the meet, while in the entire country only 97 seventh graders and only 24 eighth graders did so.

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 relationships. The students will participate in one more WordMasters meet during the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in June to those who achieved and/or improved the most in the course of the year.