Language Arts Classroom Competition
WordMasters: Grade 5 Blue Division Jan-Feb '11
All of the words listed here will appear in the first WordMasters Challenge, which will be held at your school between February 1 and February 21. (Your teacher will tell you exactly when.) The WordMasters Challenge is an analogy-solving contest. The contest will challenge you to use the words from your list in logical pairs that will look like this:
SPEECH : BOASTFUL :: SMILE : ___________________________________
(a. slack / b. smug / c. humble / d. taut / e. subdued)
To do this well, you will have to understand the exact meanings of all of your words, and you will have to reason carefully about the relationships shown in the pairs.
Here is how you should get ready for the Challenge: After you have learned the meanings of these words, think about possible relationships among them. Which words have similar meanings? Which words have nearly opposite meanings? (Of course, some words have more than one meaning.) Think of some categories under which several words might be grouped.
Be sure you understand the part of speech of a word—whether it's a noun, a verb, or an adjective. (Some words can be pronounced in more than one way, and many, such as "ferment" and "hamper" on this list, can be either a noun or a verb depending on how they are used. "Humble" can be a verb or an adjective.) Pay attention to the prefixes and suffixes of words, because they are often clues to meaning and part of speech. And try to familiarize yourself with other forms of these words—not just "banish" but also "banishment," not just "laggard" but also "lag," not just "prig" but also "priggish," not just "ferment" but also "fermentation," not just "slacken" but also "slack," not just "savory" but also "savor," not just "vestige" but also "vestigial," not just "controversy" but also "controversial," not just "ignite" but also "ignition," etc.
Keep this list. Some of these words will also appear in the third WordMasters Challenges, scheduled for later this year.