When Will Davis participated in the Reader’s Digest National Word Power Challenge at Village School last May he did not expect to be the top scoring fourth grade student in the state. After taking the oral exam he was invited to take a written qualifying test as a grade level champion.##M:[more]##
Will, now a fifth grade student, was awarded a certificate of merit during a school assembly in late September, and the school received editions of Mark Twains’s “The Prince and the Pauper” and Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” Frances McDonough, the language arts specialist at Village School, coordinates the Word Power Challenge program.
A student in the accelerated and enriched mathematics program, Will, 11, has also studied piano for two years, played the cello in fourth grade, and now plays the alto sax.
The family moved to West Windsor from Olney, Maryland in August, 2004. His mother, Maureen, is a vice president at Verizon’s corporate headquarters in Basking Ridge. His father, George, is a senior project manager with Verizon. His sister, Kathryn, 14, a freshman at High School North, plays volleyball on the junior varsity team.
A fencing student at the Cercle d’Escrime in Princeton for the past two years, Will attended summer fencing camp at Princeton University. According to his father, he likes bike riding, computer video games, playing Dungeons and Dragons and is a Mets Fan.
“Will is an avid reader of fantasy books — he started reading both the Harry Potter series and also Eragon series in second grade, and nonfiction political/economics,” says his father. “In the summer of 2005 (when he had just finished third grade) he read my copy of the best seller `Freakenomics” and he likes John Stossel’s books, including `Gimme Me a Break.’ His favorite author is Orson Scott Card — he’s read all of the Ender’s series numerous times.”
In 2005, Ming-Ming Tran, then 11, of West Windsor, took first place in the third annual Reader’s Digest National Word Power Challenge held at Disney-MGM Studios in Florida — and earned a $25,”000 college scholarship. She was a sixth grade student at Grover Middle School.
