Strong whole-school effort propels school to Vocabulary Bowl championship
St. Thomas Aquinas High School students are naturally competitive and their sports teams rank highly across the state, boasting an impressive tally of 130 FHSAA state titles. When they realized they were in second place for the Spring 2024 Vocabulary Bowl, their competitive spirit kicked in. Their determination led to a decisive 1st place national victory, mastering 111,669 new words and unseating the seven-time reigning champions at Etiwanda High School. Rookie teacher Carolina Thompson and Department Head Misty Tabon were driving forces behind the win, rallying the whole school to participate.
St. Thomas Aquinas High School
About the school
- Location:
- Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Grades:
- 9-12
- Number of students:
- 2,031
- Characteristics:
- Private Catholic
How they use Vocabulary.com
- Grades:
- 9-12
- Subjects:
- English Language Arts
The challenges
St. Thomas Aquinas has a history of academic excellence dating back to 1936 and was named a National Blue Ribbon school in 2022. Students are encouraged to apply themselves in challenging classes ranging from AP Biology to Theology, which require them to master specialized vocabulary. All students also take the ACT before graduation, and the school puts a lot of emphasis on ACT vocabulary prep.
The school uses workbooks for explicit instruction in root words, prefixes, and suffixes. However, Ms. Thomson says that students found working from the print books uninspiring. Many of the book references were outdated, leaving her students puzzled.
As a first-year teacher, Ms. Thompson was looking for tools that would help her students improve word mastery and writing skills while making her job as a first-year teacher easier. "I was a last-minute hire, and I didn’t even get the two-week onboarding in the summer," she says. "I had to fake it until I could make it." In addition to supplementing her curriculum, she wanted a better way to help students master word lists related to the books they were reading in class. Misty Tabon, 10th-grade English teacher and Department Head, recommended Vocabulary.com based on several years of success with the program.
St. Thomas Aquinas High School wins the Division I Championship in the Spring 2024 Vocabulary Bowl
The solution
Ms. Tabon uses Vocabulary.com to reinforce the Greek and Latin roots students are learning in class and prepare them for standardized testing. She front-loads vocabulary for novels they are about to read to improve fluency and comprehension. Ms. Thompson quickly adopted the program in her 9th-grade classes as well.
When they realized that the Vocabulary Bowl was underway, the school was in 2nd place nationally, and Ms. Tabon was ranked 4th on the teacher leaderboard. That knowledge galvanized both teachers and their students. To spread awareness to the rest of the school, Ms. Thompson made flyers, sent motivational emails to colleagues, and set up a table in the cafeteria where she gave away candy and talked up the Bowl. On Friday mornings, the whole school participated in a 15-minute "wordathon" to master more words.
Students started working on VocabTrainer on their own and requested additional assignments to rack up more points. Ms. Thompson created individual lists for students based on their interests, which they could complete for extra credit. Ms. Tabon says, "My students were intrinsically motivated to WANT to win. They wanted to see if they could win first place—they were on a mission! As a teacher, I was just over the moon."
Ms. Thompson appreciated the mix of structure, fun, and accessibility provided by Vocabulary.com. Students work toward word mastery systematically; the program automatically tracks their progress and adjusts to their mastery levels. At the same time, game-like scoring and awards—and events like the Vocabulary Bowl—keep students motivated and engaged. Best of all, it reduces the workload for teachers.
Here’s how students at St. Thomas Aquinas High School are using Vocabulary.com:
- English teachers assign weekly word lists to students correlated to the literature books they are reading or create their own lists. Ms. Thompson likes to create individual lists based on student interests. Ms. Tabon requires a mastery level of 90% on assigned word lists.
- Some teachers in other content areas, such as science or theology, use Vocabulary.com to help students master specialized vocabulary.
- Students use VocabTrainer on their own. The ability to master words on a mobile browser makes word learning accessible anywhere and anytime.
The results
Ultimately, students at St. Thomas Aquinas mastered 111,669 words during the two-month Vocabulary Bowl—finishing nearly 42,000 words ahead of seven-time Bowl champions at Etiwanda. Ms. Tabon’s classes finished first in the nation at the classroom level, with Ms. Thompson’s students cheering them on every step of the way.
While winning the Vocabulary Bowl was fun, the real results show in the classroom—and beyond. Ms. Tabon says Vocabulary.com helps her students with reading comprehension and fluency. Ms. Thompson has noticed students using more sophisticated vocabulary in their writing as the year goes on. Her 9th-grade students also did exceptionally well in reading on the Pre-ACT, which is calibrated at an 11th-grade level. With one win behind them, teachers and students at St. Thomas Aquinas are now looking forward to the next Vocabulary Bowl.