CHESAPEAKE, Va. — When it comes to vocabulary, a few students in Chesapeake are some of the smartest in the entire country.
Fourth-grade students Abigail Andrus, Alyssa Jenkins, and Charles Scalf are proving wise beyond their years. The three students at Greenbrier Intermediate love vocabulary, and it shows.
The kids are competing in a vocab competition at the national level and learning words considerably harder than normal in The WordMasters Challenge.
"The WordMasters Challenge is a national critical thinking competition that encourages children to look at words in a different way and then challenges them to use those words to create analogies," teacher Kim Thompson said.
In the latest round, Abigail scored an impressive 19/20, while Charles and Alyssa earned a perfect score. Out of the 150,000 nationwide competitors, only 31 fourth graders were perfect, including these two from Chesapeake.
"Very proud of them because there are teachers who can't do that perfect score," Thompson said.
In a drive for perfection, the fourth graders are strengthening their vocab and reading skills and learning that hard work now can pay off later.
"It's really important to know these things at such a young age because it will help you when you become an adult at so many types of jobs," Charles said.
The students have one more WordMasters competition this year and will get the final results in May.