The Middle School Scrabble Club is up and running again for the year. I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of students we can get to turn out for Scrabble Club each Wednesday. Attendance is up this year. Last year, we kept it really simple. Students (and a few teachers) simply showed up, set up boards and played. My colleague who helps run the club and I decided to try something a little different this year. We devised a spread sheet to keep track of the scores each week. We announced that we will have two winners in each grade level: one for highest average per-game score and one for the greatest number of accumulated points. This way, a kid with so-so scores each game can still win a prize by simply showing up every week and accumulating a lot of points.
We post the results on the classroom door every Friday morning. The response has been phenomenal. The weekly standings generate a lot of buzz among the students. Last week the sixth-grader boy who held the top spot for three week running was dethroned by fellow sixth grader Phoebe Lo. She currently holds a two-point lead.
Who said competition and education don’t mix?
-Jack
You should think about awarding what I call "style points". While I am not too proud to claim a triple word score with the word "zoo" and win the game, my darling husband, a/k/a Mr. Dictionary, will lose the game but take great pride in placing the word "haberdasher" on the board. If there were style points, he would always win.
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