Alva considers herself a pretty good student. She gets mostly good grades and rarely turns work in late―even in social studies, where her teacher assigns homework every single night. One day, Alva’s teacher announces that Alva is the only student in the sixth grade who has turned in all of her of social studies assignments on time―all . . . year . . . long.

At first, Alva is embarrassed by the attention, especially when some of her classmates tease her about it. The next day, though, Alva feels a little twinge of pride when she turns in her social studies homework. She notices that her teacher nods and smiles slightly as she checks off Alva’s name in her gradebook. The other students pay attention too―they want to see if Alva’s record will be broken that day, or the next, or the next.

Little by little, Alva begins to care―a LOT―about her new claim to fame. Maybe it’s the same competitiveness that makes Alva so fierce on the soccer field, but she finds that she can’t stand the thought of turning in even one assignment late. That’s why Alva starts to panic one night near the end of the school year when she realizes, suddenly, that her “winning streak” might just end the very next morning.

Alva has agreed to babysit her younger cousins while their parents attend a concert. And since her aunt and uncle will return home late on a school night, Alva will spend the night. The kids are pretty wound up most of the evening, and Alva isn’t able to start her homework until almost ten o’clock.

The directions for her social studies assignment are brief, as they often are:

Describe three examples of judicial power granted by the United States Constitution.

Alva feels that she understands the Constitution fairly well―her class has been studying it for the past week. There’s another problem, though: Alva is pretty sure that she’s never seen the word judicial before.

Normally, Alva would just grab a dictionary, but she has no idea where she might find one in her cousins’ house. They’re not even old enough for elementary school yet! If she were at home, Alva could use her own dictionary―or sneak into her parent’s room and borrow one of their phones to look up the word. If it weren’t so late, she could call her parents and ask for their help. But Alva knows they both have to be at work before 7―she can’t wake them up just to have them look up a word.

All seems lost until Alva suddenly remembers a language arts lesson that she thought was pretty goofy at the time. Her teacher, Mr. Logan, had announced that he was about to show the class some special “word attack” moves that would give them power over any word they encountered.

Alva can’t remember all of the steps involved in a “word attack,” but she does remember the first one because it sounded pretty brutal: Tear the word apart. You’re supposed to separate the word into pieces so you can “attack” one piece at a time.

Alva looks again at the word judicial. It has three syllables, so it makes sense to divide it into three parts.

Alva stares at the dismembered word. What did Mr. Logan say was the next move in a word attack? Alva isn’t sure, but she decides to focus on the word’s syllables, one a time.

J-U-D looks like part of the word prejudice, which Alva does know. Prejudice means pre-judging, or judging ahead of time. If I ignore the prefix pre, Alva thinks, J-U-D probably just means judge. Therefore, the word judicial must be related to judging, or judges.

That just leaves -cial. . . . Alva tries to think of other words ending in C-I-A-L. There’s special, of course, and also social. These are adjectives―they’re used to describe nouns―so judicial is probably an adjective too.

Alva looks back at her social studies assignment. Her teacher uses judicial to describe a type of power granted by the Constitution. And, because of its first three letters, judicial is related to judging and judges. One of the things that Alva remembers about the Constitution is that it created the Supreme Court, a group of judges who have the final say on how laws are enforced. Therefore, “judicial powers” must refer to those judges and what they are allowed to do. All Alva has to do is think of three things the Supreme Court is allowed to do, and her winning streak will continue. Piece – of – cake, Alva thinks.

Alva sleeps well that night, knowing her reputation is secure. Right before drifting off, though, Alva decides that the first thing she’ll do when she gets to school the next morning . . . is to thank Mr. Logan for sharing his “word attack” skills. They turned out to be not so goofy after all.