A team representing The Hockaday School achieved Highest Honors in the recent WordMasters Challenge™—a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 150,000 students annually. The third-grade team scored an impressive 188 points out of a possible 200 in the first of three meets this year, placing first in the nation.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the WordMasters Challenge™, third graders Christine Park and Libby Temple each earned a perfect score of 20 on the challenge. Nationally, only 14 third graders achieved this result. Four other Hockaday students achieved outstanding results and their language arts teacher, Erin Oxford, coached them along the way.

The WordMasters Challenge™ is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), 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. Although most vocabulary enrichment and analogy-solving programs are designed for use by high school students, WordMasters Challenge™ materials have been specifically created for younger students in grades three through eight. They are particularly well suited for children who are motivated by the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

Further information is available at the company’s website: www.wordmasterschallenge.com.

Congrats to Chaucer Langbert (Form III) for coming in 2nd place in the fourth annual DFW Regional Brain Bee which took place here at Hockaday this past Saturday. Chaucer and other members of the Hockaday community faced tough competition, with 13 total participants from Ursuline, St. Mark’s, Coppell, and St. Paul HS (all the way from Shiner, TX!).

The Brain Bee is a spelling-bee-like competition for high school students designed to get them interested in neuroscience. Did you know Hockaday has a Neuroscience Club? The winner of our regional Brain Bee is eligible to participate in the National Brain Bee, and if they win, they will advance to the International Brain Bee! Registration is free and open to all high school students. For more information, there is a free e-book, Brain Facts, which students may use to study (it’s even available as a free audio download!). 

Read more by checking out their website. Shower Power is an app designed to make people more aware of their water usage. It tells people how they can be more efficient while taking showers so that less water is consumed. The app works in coordination with a waterproof Bluetooth speaker that will project your specific shower program. Shower Power has customizable features that determine how long each step of your shower should take based on your hair type, what you need to do in the shower that day, and your usual shower time. When you get into the shower, just press the play button on the app home screen and your program will start. Pretty cool, right?