Word wizards at Enosburg Falls Middle School win Vermont Vocabulary Bowl – St. Albans Messenger

ENOSBURG FALLS – The Enosburg Falls Hornets remain victorious in vocabulary, topping word-mastery for the state. 

For the third season in a row, Enosburg Falls Middle School have been crowned the victor in the Vocabulary Bowl for Vermont. The school’s first place victory saw them master 1,156 more words over second place, Craftsbury Academy in Orleans County, for a total score of 4,503 points. 

In order to achieve a superb school score, students are required to master as many words as they can. Every word mastered, earns the student and school a single point, and the most points win. 

The program not only requires students to use words not usually in their repertoire, it also teaches new vocabulary through an adaptive learning process which adjusts to a student’s proficiency level. 

Daniel Clarke, Enosburg Falls Middle School literacy teacher who spurred the students onto the Vocabulary Bowl, said he creates and assigns lists of words to practice for vocab and spelling tests which help both in the vocab bowl and in student’s own education. 

“Along with the lists I assign, students are encouraged to seek out other lists on the site that cater to their interests and even create lists of words to learn on their own,” he said. 

The school’s past successes motivated this year’s students as the competition got closer. The students, Clarke said, want to continue the winning legacy Enosburg Falls Middle School has grown. 

“They like the competitive atmosphere associated with this type of gamified learning, as they compete against students and schools from all over the state, the country and even internationally,” Clarke said. “Their competitive spirit is contagious as it helps to motivate one another.”

The shared motivation has encouraged students to participate in word mastery overnights, weekends and even during school breaks. For some students, mastering spelling has become as much a part of their day as brushing their teeth. 

“Mastering words is like my morning coffee; I need it to start my day. I practice wherever I am at my sister’s basketball practice, at home, or waiting for the bus,” a top scoring 7th grader Hunter Dupaw said. “It’s my favorite hobby, especially on bad weather days when I stay inside and work on vocabulary for school.”

Eighth-graders Colleen Robtoy and Mia St. Pierre said they worked hard to challenge themselves by learning new lists that weren’t required.

Watching the students strive to learn and participate was extremely rewarding as an educator, Clarke said. 

Leading the way

Top performers in Enosburg Falls said they were all impressed with their ability to rise to the top and echoed thoughts from Clarke about motivating each other. 

“I can confidently say that I impressed myself by doing all of this for my school, my community, and my family,” Dupaw said. “When I succeeded, it inspired others to do the same.”

Liam Gratton, a top performing 8th grader said some of the students took it upon themselves to continue working on the school’s performance. He said students were recognized at the end of the first quarter for being a top achiever, but decided over the Thanksgiving break to continue to boost the school’s numbers. 

Seventh-grader Aleena Becic said it gave her an opportunity to share her dedication and skills to the school. She hopes it encourages others to embrace their own skills and talents as well. 

As the students congratulated themselves on their performance, they also made sure to point out how their work was only a part of the school’s sum of mastered words. 

“Everyone worked really hard to achieve the victory. I feel proud of being a top earner, but I am also proud of how well everyone else did,” a 7th grade top performer Jacob Weed said. 

Along with their own work ethic, the middle schoolers said the school and specifically the literacy teacher, Clarke, helped them reach high potentials and continuously find excitement in the Vocabulary Bowl. 

“In my school, one educator, Mr. Clarke, actively encouraged our participation in competitions,” Becic said. “On several occasions, he implemented motivational strategies, such as offering ice cream rewards and organizing an outing to [the] Flying Disc, to foster a competitive spirit among students.

Rewarding roots

While the Vocab Bowl is a competition, it also helps students in reading, writing, spelling and more. 

The gamified learning and lists full of words derived from Greek and Latin root words helped students to practice new words and learning skills. 

“Working on my vocabulary has really helped me understand more complex words and improve my reading skills,” Becic said. “Because of this effort, I’ve worked my way up to a 12th-grade reading level.”

Vocabulary skills can help students sound out and learn definitions of words to improve their understanding and comprehension, allowing them to read at higher levels. 

Robtoy and St. Pierre said the competition helped them learn to define and spell different vocabulary words. That work to understand the words has given them skills to comprehend and figure out definitions of unknown words. 

“For example, if we’re reading a book and come across a word we don’t understand, we can use other roots and definitions we’ve learned to figure out what a word means,” they said. 

A school-wide ice cream celebration for their dominance is coming to Ensoburg Falls this spring in what’s starting to become a traditional event for the school.