New this semester is a contest and writing program called Word of the Week. Every week a word is posted on www.arrowheadschools.org. Additionally to it being put online, there are slips in the library students can pick up and complete to possibly win the contest.
Word of the Week, or WOW, is a competition to increase students’ interest in vocabulary and to encourage students to be more aware of the words being used around them.
Once a week, a word is posted on the Arrowhead website and includes the parts of speech, definition, synonyms, antonyms, and examples of the words used in a sentence. The sentence examples include the word and relate to Arrowhead.
The idea for WOW was started by the library staff and the reading PCT group, a group that has organized meetings where teachers talk about topics regarding the classroom. English teacher Terri Carnell makes the Google documents with the word and its information. Then, the North Campus librarian, Donna Smith, puts them on the Arrowhead home page.

The WOW contest is what makes the idea interactive. The contest allows students to enter, win a prize, and gain an education at the same time.
While in the library, students can grab a slip each week and fill it out to be entered into the contest. On the slip, the student will first fill out their name and grade, then information about WOW. This includes where they heard the Word of the Week being said, who or what it was said by, and then the student writes the sentence that the WOW was used in or a description of how it was used.
The words were chosen after seeing 1,000 words on vocabulary.com. Then, those 1,000 words were cross-referenced with the ACT list and were narrowed down to 18 words that will be used for the rest of the year.
The first week of WOW started at the end of January and plans to continue into next year. The words that have been used so far this semester have been Vex and Fervent.
The main goal of WOW is to improve reading comprehension and is a fun, interactive way to increase student learning, says Terri Carnell.