A team of fourth-grade students in the Long Beach Learning Activities to Raise Creativity program achieved Highest Honors in the national WordMasters Challenge vocabulary competition. The students placed third in the nation in the overall competition, earning a cumulative score of 550 points out of a possible 600. They also placed fifth in the nation in their final meet.

The LARC team, comprised of Mia Berseus, Jordan Collinson, Brendan Hellman, Ava Liguori, Owen Murphy, William Pagan, Daniel Quick, Chloe Silverberg and Jared Tate, entered the difficult Blue Division under the direction of teachers Beverlee Bertinetti and Caitlin Fuentes. East, Lido, Lindell, West and Long Beach Catholic regional schools were all represented.

Nearly 150,000 students participate in this national vocabulary competition each year. LARC students earned a cumulative score of 550 points out of a possible 600. Leyla Dibra, Ryder Moss, Owen Murphy, Chloe Silberberg and Jared Tate were identified by the WordMasters Challenge program for performing exceptionally well, and Jack Schare was commended for obtaining a perfect score of 20 in the final meet.

Long Beach students have a strong history of success in the WordMasters Challenge competitions. The contest is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.