Stewarts Creek fourth-grader takes first place in WordMasters Challenge

A fourth-grader from Stewarts Creek Elementary School was the top WordMasters Challenge scorer among four local elementary schools.

Dexter Trageser, who will be a fifth-grader this coming fall, received the first-place score for all three meets in this year’s WordMaster Challenge. Trageser scored 19 of 20 points in a recent challenge and 51 of 60 combined points for all three challenges.

He was competing with fourth- and fifth-grade Spectrum students from Brown’s Chapel Elementary, Smyrna Primary Elementary, Smyrna Elementary and Stewarts Creek.

“Dexter applied himself in class and had the discipline to further study these words outside of class,” said Mary Scott, Spectrum facilitator for the four schools. “His hard work and dedication has paid off.”

Trageser, who Scott described as a remarkable student, qualified into the Spectrum program this past school year.

WordMasters Challenge is a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually.

All of the Spectrum students enrolled in Rutherford County Schools participated in the challenge.

First-, second- and third-graders took the third-grade tests, while fourth- and fifth-graders took the fifth-grade tests. Rutherford County students were in the Gold Division, which is the advanced vocabulary and analogy challenge.

Trageser was the only student to hold the first-place title in the district for all three tests, according to Scott.

WordMaster Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of advanced, interesting new words. There were 75 of these to study during the course of the school year, according to a release.

Students are challenged to use these words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.