Students at Fort Hunt Elementary School scored big last month in the first meet of this year's WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition entered by over 250,000 students annually. This challenge is an exercise in critical thinking through which students become familiar with a set of words and then use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships.
The school's third graders placed first in the nation among 194 school teams and the fourth graders tied for seventh place in the nation among 278 teams.
Five of the school's students (Janna Murphy, Laura Reynolds, Sasha Spriggs, Jessica Merek and Sandra Vargas) won highest honors for individual achievement. They were part of an elite group (nationwide only 84 fourth graders and 60 fifth graders achieved this honor) who earned perfect scores.
Other students who achieved outstanding results were third graders Daniel O'Keefe, Spencer Watkins, Thomas Gigure, Timothy Hatfield, Brooke Kanarek, Niko Knoblauch, Julie Seeley-Hall, Celeste Zabowski, Katherine Pfleeger and Nicole Weinberg.
Fourth graders included Brian Fitzsimmons, Tori Jourdan, Bonnie Morgan, Kyle Skudlavek, Ivory Vi, Matthew Francom, Katherine Jacobs, Suzanne Kirby, Mary Langan, Tracy Laux, Emma Swaney and Alexander Weinberg. Eric Dale, Aiden Mosley, Brendon Cummiskey, Sarah Holloway, Hunter Kincannon and Stephen Reynolds were among the fifth graders receiving special recognition.