One Student's Success Means Just as Much as National Recognition

12,315. That's the number of words mastered in July by students at this Houston middle school, earning it the top slot on the Vocabulary.com national Leaderboard last month. In the last two school years, St. Vincent de Paul has claimed four national monthly Champion's Banners, plus numerous Top Ten finishes on both the Texas and the North American Leaderboards.

Yet when Vocabulary.com checked in with teacher Kathy Zimbaldi to discuss her students' latest accomplishment, she didn't start by talking about hard-earned school pride or the impressive degree of class participation in evidence. She talked about Gus Groff.

Like many students, Gus had plans for the summer. He was headed to camp, and to him a major word-learning assignment was a daunting but unavoidable task. Gus knew that Mrs. Z and Vocabulary.com would hold him accountable for the work, and he was determined to do it so that he could enjoy the rest of vacation.

And do it, he did. To master the words assigned, which meant proving he knew what they meant in multiple practice sessions and contexts, Gus plugged away and answered nearly two thousand five hundred questions. Maria Groff, Gus's mother, says that despite all the work, Gus didn't get discouraged. And older brother Henry, himself a former student of Mrs. Zimbaldi, says that his younger brother "was obsessed!"

Mrs. Groff explains that once she saw Gus beaming with pride, she felt good about him spending the screen time to expand his word-knowledge and sees Vocabulary.com as a positive way to use technology. She describes how her child went from reluctant to enthusiastic in the space of two days. "Gus loved the immediacy of the format. It gave him the instant feedback that he needs." Mrs. Zimbaldi echoes this view, noting that the combination of privacy and feedback that computer-based learning provides allows her students to learn from their mistakes with less frustration.

Gus Groff completed Mrs. Z's assignment before going to camp, mastering over two hundred words that he will encounter in the literature he reads next year as a seventh grader. Out of St. Vincent de Paul's 12,315 total words mastered, this might not seem like a lot. But it's a huge accomplishment in the eyes of his teacher, who knows what it took for Gus to earn that stat.