Pittman earns perfect score in WordMasters Challenge
GRAVETTE — Parker Pittman, a sixth-grader at Gravette Middle School, recently received a perfect score in the first of three meets in this year’s WordMasters Challenge, a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually.
Parker, 12, is the daughter of Will Pittman, Lady Lions senior high basketball coach, and Melissa Pittman, physical education instructor at Glenn Duffy Elementary.
Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge, Parker earned a perfect score of 20. Nationally, only 13 sixth-graders achieved this score.
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 New Jersey which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools. Further information is available at the company’s website, http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com.