L.B. WordMasters finish 10th in nation

Posted Thursday, February 4, 2010 9:54 am

These Long Beach fifth graders finished tenth in the nation in their division of the WordMasters Challenge. Front row, from left, is Brendan Carpenter, Finian Ashmead, Noelani Tomicick, Jake Kaliszewski, and Patrick Geiger. Back row, from left, Michael Cesar, Matilda Guille, Natalie Swegler, Savannah Kile, Kristen Miciotta and teacher Beverlee Bertinetti.

Courtesy Long Beach School District

A team of fifth graders representing the Long Beach School District won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge, a language arts competition entered by approximately 220,000 students annually. They participated in the competition through the district's Learning Activities for Raising Creativity (LARC) program based at East School.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division and coached by LARC teacher Beverlee Bertinetti, the team of Finian Ashmead, Brendan Carpenter, Michael Cesar, Patrick Geiger, Matilda Guille, Jake Kaliszewski, Savannah Kile, Kristen Miciotta, Natalie Swegler and Noelani Tomicick tied for tenth in the nation among the 699 school teams competing at this grade level and in this division. Long Beach produced the only fifth grade team in New York State to place in the top ten.

Fourth grader Paulina Cardona, a first generation American whose parents are from Columbia, earned a perfect score in the meet. Of the 35,460 fourth graders competing from around the nation, only 39 achieved this distinction.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of new words, and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various types of logical relationships by thinking both analytically and metaphorically.

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