Students in Long Beach Public Schools’ Learning Activities to Raise Creativity (LARC) program participated in the WordMasters Challenge, where 11 students placed in the top 5 percent nationally. Two earned perfect scores.
WordMasters is a national vocabulary and verbal reasoning competition designed to help students in grades three through eight establish critical thinking skills, improve reading comprehension and analogical reasoning. In a series of three meets — December, February, and April — students are given a list of 25 vocabulary words per meet to complete word analogies. Each meet includes a 20-question test, which gets progressively harder by the end of the sequence.
Fifth graders Jiya Klarner and August Rodabaugh both achieved a perfect score of 20, a rare distinction earned by only 35 fifth graders nationwide. Also joining the top 5 percent were Max April, Blythe Aull, Dylan Davies, Declan Garvey, Tyler Gorman, Charles Johnston, Rafe Kaminsky, Beckett McCaffrey-Ricardo and Ryan McMahon.
The LARC program has come full circle for Caitlin Fuentes-King. She was in the program as a student in the 1990s, and has taught it for the last 18 years. She said the program is more about conceptualizing than memorizing.
Her students use their words as tools to complete larger creative projects. In addition to writing songs, students can construct 3-D or digital models of objects, and use their vocabulary words to describe their model.
“They don’t just learn the words,” Fuentes-King said. “They learn how to use them in context.”
Understanding vocabulary in context allows students to improve their standardized test scores and advanced reading. Fuentes-King gives them that opportunity from her knowledge of the LARC program, and wants her students to “think and take risks.”
“LARC gave me the courage to think deeply,” she said. “I want my students to think deeply, and I try to instill that idea in my classroom.”
The competition, which has over 125,000 national participants every year, is divided into Gold and Blue divisions. Participants from LARC were in the Gold Division — demonstrating advanced language skills — which, as Fuentes-King said, puts them at an elite level. She also praised parents for helping create a nurturing environment.
With two more competitions on the horizon, the district says they’re excited for the future. “Long Beach LARC students have set an impressive standard of excellence,” a statement from the district read, “and we look forward to continued success in the WordMasters Challenge.”
Fuentes-King said she is very proud of her students, and that they’re taking intellectual risks. “It’s not about the score,” Fuentes-King said. “We have a community that’s encouraging our children to reach for the stars.”
