‘House’ party
Wellton Elementary students celebrate first year of school system
Never underestimate the value of teamwork.
That’s the lesson Wellton Elementary students are taking in at the end of the school year as they celebrate the first year of using a “house” system.
Seeking to motivate students and strengthen relationships between grade levels at the small east county school after Principal Lisa Jameson saw the system in action at Ron Clark Academy, school leaders tapped into the system long in use in Great Britain (and perhaps inspired by a certain author’s popular novels involving magic and mayhem).
“We are such a small school that students in a grade level are very familiar with each other,” Jameson explained. “We needed a way to get our students to interact with students of different grade levels. We also wanted our house system to be a motivational program — each student knows that working hard and good behavior can get points awarded for their house.”
Mindful of infringing on another’s copyright, Harrison said the school’s houses are named after the four natural elements in their Latin forms: Terra (earth), Agua (water), Ventus (wind) and Ignis (fire).
Students stay in the same house until they graduate from Wellton, which is a pre K-8th grade campus, Harrison said, to give students a sense of support and allow friendships to take hold.
Fourth grade instructor Maria Roth, who helped chaperone the trip, said students score points by completing tasks individually or as a team — including reading books, physical challenges (students recently completed a “dance off,” she pointed out), academic tests, scholastic achievements and participation in school sports.
Harrison, the head of the “House of Terra,” said students also earn points for demonstrating good character and carrying out random acts of kindness.
“The students interact with students they normally would not interact with,” said Karry Byrd fourth/ fifth grade combo teacher of the house system. “But in their house they have to work together.”
“(Terra House) had been in fourth place many times, (they) kept working (and reading!) and they accumulated the most points,” Jameson said. “They worked hard and did an amazing job on the last challenge — a dance contest using the Ron Clark Academy’s ‘Hot Pocket Challenge.’”
“They all just started pulling together in the third quarter,” Roth said of how the house rallied. “They all started working together and they all starting pulling in the same direction — and they came out on top.”
Jameson said that the school heavily promoted the end-of-the-year trip to motivate students, and the winner was revealed on Friday, with the trip on Monday.
The students were rewarded with a movie in the morning, a picnic lunch at Gateway Park, a floatdown, and in the late afternoon after leaving the river, were to have a dinner “feast” at the West Wetlands.