Four students representing Crabapple Lane Elementary School recently wonhighest honors in this year's WordMasters Challenge - a national language arts competition entered by over 225,000 students annually.

Competing in the very difficult Gold Division of the Challenge, fourth graders Kristie Liao, Mollie Michel, Kelsey Silbert and Mamie Smith all earned perfect scores in this year's second meet, held in February.

In the entire country only 205 fourth graders earned perfect scores. Other students at the school who also achieved outstanding results in the meet were fourth graders Paul Giorgi, Erin Gorman, Andrew Johnson, Alexandra Martinez, Kaila Green, Sue Liang, Sarah Oso, Elizabeth Roshelli, and Trey Walters; and fifth graders Michael Plunkett, Logan Austin, Nathan Cotton, and Meghan Plunkett. The school's students were coached in preparation for the Challenge by Mrs. Heidi Johnson.

WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking which 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 Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.

WordMasters Challenge has been administered for the past 19 years by a company based in Allendale, New Jersey, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools.