Imagine that you are in Health and Wellness, Art, Gym, Music, or Digital Citizenship. It’s near the end of class, and as you’re lining up to leave, you hear the teacher say this: “You earned a three. It could’ve been a four, but you were on the noisy side today.”
Scoring is part of Specialsfest, a program that helps make the classroom a happier place by encouraging students to make good choices. Different grade levels compete against each other. Each class can earn up to four points a day for good behavior. At the end of the trimester, the grade level with the most points wins a party.
“I think Specialsfest was very fun and very multi-optional because there were a lot of things to do,” Tuazon said. She is in fifth grade, and her grade level won a party in the all-purpose room. Some party activities included karaoke, drawing and coloring, hula hooping, minute-to-win-it challenges, and basketball knockout. Students were allowed to rotate throughout the activities. Tuazon said she loves competing against students in grades 4 and grades 6. She said she was always ready to try her best to get a three or four for her class.
“It was actually really fun, and I look forward to beating the other grades again,” Riya Shan, a fifth-grader, said. “We ended up with a lot of points. After we won Specialsfest, we got to have a party with all the other fifth graders, and that was really fun, too.”
Now, a different opinion. Fifth-grader Owen Grompone thought winning Specialsfest was stressful and wasn’t worth it.
“I thought that it was very stressful,” Grompone said, “because I think the teachers didn’t give us fours when we really deserved it. They usually gave us twos and threes, but encouraged just a lot to get fours.”
