Two fourth-graders perfect in national competition

WEST MILTON — Two Milton-Union Elementary School fourth graders, Levi Todd and Samuel Motz, achieved perfect scores in this year’s February meet of the WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition that tests students’ critical thinking in three meets a year.

Of 220,000 students competing annually, only 132 fourth-graders achieved perfect scores, said Milton-Union Elementary School teacher Tim Williams, who teaches gifted and talented students.

“I am just so proud of these two kids,” he said.

He’s been prepping students for the test for seven years, but this is the first time any have achieved perfect scores, he said. Both boys come to his class one day a week.

The students he teaches tend to be verbally gifted, but the tests are tough. The students must learn everything about 25 new words and know how to put them in the form of an analogy, he said.

He plans to take the boys out to dinner, a standing invitation to any student who earns a perfect score in the competition, he said.

Other students at the school who earned outstanding results in the meet, which is done through written tests at students’ schools, included: third-graders Dylan Schenck, Malachi White and Amy Busse; fourth-graders Abby Hissong, Chris Trimbach, Larkin Wellbaum, Blake Bayer, Lainie Smith, Emily Stevenart and Jacob Vogt; and fifth-graders Madison Linville, Joseph Patrick and Liam Neal.

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