Pupils in Years 7 to 9 went head-to-head against pupils from schools across the country and around the world in a word-based competition recently, run by the online teaching and learning resource website LiteracyPlanet.
Playing the website’s Word Mania game, pupils race against the clock to build as many words as they can in three minutes, from 15 randomly generated letter tiles. The game helps improve spelling, word recognition, and word knowledge and the company reports that on average, game scores increase by 36% over the course of the competition.
During February and March Shiplake pupils spent time practising playing the game ahead of a week-long Competition Round at the end of March, during which scores started counting towards progressing to the three-day Final Round of the competition.
The pupils took up the challenge and not only spent dedicated time during lessons honing their technique and improving their scores, the Thinking Space at lunchtime was often full of pupils practising as well.
LiteracyPlanet reported that nearly 180,000 students took part from 2,607 schools across 68 different countries, with 4.79 million games played, creating over 100 million words. At the end of the competition, Shiplake pupils alone created more than 150,000 words with Year 7 placed 7th in the UK, Year 9 11th and Year 8 came a fantastic 3rd in the UK (16th in the world), which also earned them a 3-month extension to the school’s LiteracyPlanet subscription, worth £430.
Mrs Palli-Evans, who initiated participation in the competition along with Mrs Hearn, said: “This may have been a 'game' but the boys made a lot of progress during the competition and the key message I tried to pass is that we become better when we engage and we put in the time and effort. I loved the whole experience, especially when overhearing students talking about it and seeing how passionate they were about getting Shiplake on the podium. They made such amazing progress because they learnt from their mistakes every time, helped each other, even sought out how to be better by watching videos online... they kept challenging themselves every single day throughout the competition and I couldn't be more proud of them!”
Some of the longest (and therefore highest-scoring) words spelt by Shiplake pupils included: "internationals, organisation, temperature, development, underworlds, categorised, nincompoops, positioning, overprotect, retribution, internships, competition, bargaining, doctorates, geological, sanitisers, tactically, shouldered, glittering, aeroplanes, ridiculous, underneath."
Special mention goes to James Middlehurst, who scored more than 5,000 points in 3 minutes and Zac Wood, who kept challenging himself throughout the competition and reached a point where all his scores were more than 4,000 points. Zac alone created 10,000 words during the competition!
Congratulations to the pupils below for the following achievements within Shiplake's results:
Year 7
1st place: Oliver Thomas (best score of 4,018, 103 games played, 3,828 words created)
2nd place: James Martin (best score of 3,404, 128 games played, 3,626 words created)
Joint 3rd place: Charlie Cooper (best score of 2,136, 173 games played, 6,064 words created)
Joint 3rd place: Zac Sanders (best score of 2,396, 201 games played, 5,577 words created)
Highly commended (based on a combination of best scores, games played and number of words created):
Theodore Berry
Alex Bowater-Rubio
Charlie Broad
Jonny Calow
Wilbur O'Callaghan
B Oliver
Arthur Massie
Isaac Walmsley
Year 8
1st place: James Middlehurst (best score of 5,185, 104 games, 4,261 words created)
2nd place: Zac Wood (best score of 4,282, 300 games, 10,991 words created)
3rd place: Toby Vivian (best score of 3,877, 296 games, 8,611 words created)
Highly commended:
Erik Gierakoswki
Joe Morgan
Sam Murray
Thomas Rowe
Max Jobson
Year 9
1st place: Drummond Seraille (best score of 2,459, 225 games, 6,293 words created)
2nd place: Ben Parrott (best score of 2,269, 89 games, 2,648 words created)
3rd place: Ethan Chalfont (best score of 2,066, 63 games, 1,826 words created)
