Westview Middle School uses Vocabulary.com to enhance its students’ vocabulary. The school is automatically entered into a contest that measures how often students and teachers use it in addition to regular coursework. Westview students noticed they were just points behind four area high schools, including Boulder High and made a push for the top spot this spring.
Every student at Westview Middle participated in the contest because every teacher uses lists on the site to enhance student learning, said Karen Clancy-Cribby, language arts teacher.
“It’s really a reliable app for us to find a lot of content,” she said.
The Vocabulary Bowl occurs twice a year — in the fall and spring. However, the spring competition is the first time Westview has entered the contest.
Students must master words to win points, according to Clancy-Cribby. Although all the students participated, only a few took it upon themselves to “gamify” the contest, she added.
Students calculated how many words they needed to master each day to gain enough points to beat Boulder High School.
“Boulder High looked unreachable for quite a bit of the spring but they (Westview students) figured out how to get the points and just kept working on getting the points,” Clancy-Cribby said adding that students chose to read books in their free time that would qualify for the contest. “They were learning on their own.”
Students mastered 15,774 words beating Boulder High by more than 4,000 words.
Clancy-Cribby said the impacts of learning went beyond the contest. She said students were improving on their writing assignments by incorporating new vocabulary words that they had learned.
In addition to growing vocabulary among the students, the teachers used the contest to improve collaboration among subjects. To support the students’ drive to learn more, teachers reached out to each other to provide lists that supported in-class learning and gained points for the Vocabulary Bowl.
“Watching my students and students that don’t always shine … they felt a lot of ownership with learning vocabulary and it was very cool,” Clancy-Cribby said. “I think having this academic competition was a win-win for everyone.”
