Four teams of students representing the Yeshivah of Flatbush recently won highest honors in this year's WordMasters Challenge, a national competition for high school students requiring close reading an analysis of many different kinds of literature, prose and poetry. Participating with 548 school teams from all across the country, our 12th graders placed first in the nation, our eleventh graders placed second in the nation, our tenth graders tied for third place in the nation and our ninth graders placed fifth in the nation. The teams are supervised by faculty advisor Shifra Hanon.
Several of our students won highest honors for acheivements as well.
Seniors:
Jeanette Braha
Eddie Esses
Andrea Sahris
Eliana Schwartz
Steven Staynberger
and Lauren Zalta
Placed among the highest 47 students out of 54,000 participants nationwide.
Juniors: Bert Chabbot, Renee Saff, Sol Sultan and Tali Zenilman placed among the top 39 of elevnth grade students.
Sophomores: Andrew Hersh, Aliza Kantarowitz and Albert Mishan were among the 22 highest scoring tenth graders.
Freshmen: Eli Cattan, Jen Fallack, Sarah Levy and Gabriel Rudy are amonth the top 49 highest scoring ninth graders.
The premise behind he WordMasters Challenge is that attentive reading and sensitivity to language are among the most important skills students acquire in school. the texts students must analyze for the challenge ranges from short stories to poetry to Shakespeare, even articles from the New York Times.
The students will participate in one more meet in the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in june to those who have achieved the most in the course of the year.