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Chavez High School students celebrated winning first place in the Vocabulary Bowl this month. The final winner will be announced at the end of the school year.
Chavez High School Senior Tam Tran says she finds herself using lots of new words lately. Her school holds first place in the Vocabulary Bowl, an online competition hosted by vocabulary.com. Students earn points by completing quizzes on new words. They choose from topics like SAT prep or literature. This month, Tran is one of the top five students at her school.
“I really like the word epiphany,” Tran says. “It’s just like a realization of everything that’s around, like that sudden realization that comes with the struggle of life.”
Teachers at Chavez High say tools like this help them go beyond teaching to the test. They say competing with more than 10,000 schools across the nation gets kids excited.
Peter Griffin is with vocabulary.com. He says it’s designed kind of like a video game.
“So students are playing, they’re getting points, they’re getting achievements and badges and awards, and it sort of draws them in,” Griffin says.
The winner of the Vocabulary Bowl will be announced at the end of this school year.