Troy McCrum knows his vocabulary.
\nThe Bellwood-Antis fifth grader was recognized by the school district\u2019s board of directors recently as being one of the top 100 finishers in the first ever Reader\u2019s Digest Word Power Challenge, an education contest designed to filter out the best vocabulary students in the country.
\n\u201cWhen I first looked at the words, I though to myself that no one would advance,\u201d said Kathy Young, a fifth grade teacher at B-A and also the organizer of the program at the school. \u201cI was surprised that so many students knew and understood what some of these words were. I didn\u2019t even know a few of them.\u201d
\nWhat is gibberish? What does bamboozled mean? How about hullabaloo or vernacular?
\nThese were the types of questions more than a hundred students saw during the preliminary testing for the contest.
\nAccording to Young, the top two sections in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades each were administered the test. Forty questions were given, and included word association and definition recognition.
\nAfter the scores were calculated, the top six in each section were offered another 40-question quiz, only this time more challenging. According to Young, Reader\u2019s Digest set the standard for \u201cpassing\u201d during this round.
\n\u201cIt was a tough challenge, even for the eighth graders,\u201d said Young, referencing the second quiz. \u201cBut Troy came out ahead.\u201d
\nThe journey continued for McCrum in late January when he traveled to Washington and Jefferson College to compete at the state level.
\nThere, the contest was set up more like a Spelling Bee. Young said there were 100 students in grades five through eight competing at the state level and just ten earned a spot in the finals. Unfortunately, McCrum wasn\u2019t one of them.
\n\u201cHe did a really good job,\u201d said Young. \u201cHe\u2019s a smart student and was very happy just to make it that far.\u201d
\nDespite being the first year of the program, Young said she believes it can be a great educational tool for the students for years to come.
\n\u201cThe teachers here really enjoyed administering the program and the kids had a lot of fun with it,\u201d she said. \u201cI would like to do it again next year and maybe bring the fourth grade classes on board.\u201d
\nAlso, two middle school competitive reading teams were recognized at the meeting.
\nThe \u201cBlue Team,\u201d made up of John Wolfe, Andrea Isola, Jenna Nevling, Jonathan Thompson, Nathaniel Gray, Lauren Seidel, Matthew Flaugh, Beth Wheeler, Corey Miller, Emily O\u2019Shea. Chelsea Thompson and Jessica Garber, took first place in the spring and fall competitions held at Roosevelt School in Altoona.
\nThe \u201cGold Team,\u201d made up of Cooper Campbell, Alyssa Davis, Mackenzie Sternberg, Trey Campbell, Lindsy McElhinney, Grant Martin, Troy McCrum, Allison Derr, Emily Crook, Grant DeArmitt, Lindsee Clark and Jessica Maynor, took first place honors in the spring and second place honors in the fall competition.
\nThe contest involved students reading a variety of books and answering reading comprehension questions.
\n\u201cThe fall contest was the first time we ever took two first place finishes,\u201d said Young, who along with Kathy Burch, coaches the student teams.
\nOh, and by the way, gibberish is a bunch of nonsense; bamboozled is to deceive; hullabaloo is much ado about something; and vernacular means everyday language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Troy McCrum knows his vocabulary. The Bellwood-Antis fifth grader was recognized by the school district\u2019s board of directors recently as being one of the top 100 finishers in the first ever Reader\u2019s Digest Word Power Challenge, an education contest designed to filter out the best vocabulary students in the country. \u201cWhen I first looked at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}