“I enjoyed the virtual pep rally very much.
Please pass on my congratulations to your kids (and you, of course) for a spectacular job!
Felt like a regular school!”
- Centennial Staff Member
Centennial has a tradition of running one big Pep Rally every December. No assemblies allowed due to Covid so that was a no go. An AP suggested we try a virtual pep rally. So we were on it. My Leadership class started all the planning and … Covid outbreaks went crazy and Centennial went all online for December and January. Pep Rally postponed.
My semester 2 students took the baton and built on the semester 1 student plan. Here is what we did.
The night before we decorated the school so that when kids walked in Friday morning they knew the Pep Rally was on. We decorated both door entrances and also put up coyote paw prints with every student’s and staff’s name on them – 1300 in total. One of my students said there was a really cool vibe that morning as students and staff searched for their paw prints. Why put up everyone’s name? A simple way to build connections and show that everyone was remembered and belong at Centennial.
We broadcast to the whole school using Microsoft Teams Live Event from our classroom. The challenge was that there was a 30 second delay between our live broadcast and what people saw in their classrooms. But it could handle the stream so nothing was glitchy.
The pep rally started with a PowerPoint of pictures from school events and activities so far. Each fifth slide said “Pep Rally starting momentarily”. We also had pep rally music playing through our Spotify playlist we created. This gave time for everyone to log in.
Next we had our first MC team on camera. They were standing 6 feet apart so that they could take off their masks. They got everyone fired up for the Pep Rally, thanked staff for giving up instructional time, and then introduced the Yote Street Boys. Then we pushed play.
Leadership students created and filmed this video 2 weeks before the rally. All the people you see are students and staff. This is our third version of a Yote Street Boys video. At the end of this post are the links to previous ones. Hopefully they give you some ideas.
Then came the scavenger hunt. We had two different MCs on camera introducing the activity and explaining the rules. We also had an accompanying PowerPoint to show them. Classes were given 3 questions to answer from the Yote Street video. They also had to identify where students were in the pictures. Each class had a card. Two students were chosen to run to each area, answer the question correctly, and get a stamp. Once they had three stamps they were shown a picture of the Coyote mascot in the gym. First class to get to the Coyote won Dilly Bars from DQ for their entire class.
Click here to download the Scavenger Hunt Power Point we showed. https://1drv.ms/p/s!Ah1BegozVtqB4ESlFZ1YeBd_fHLC?e=60AdYx
We then finished with a whole school Kahoot. We upgraded to the premium package which allows 2000 players. There were 15 questions. Each showed the picture of a staff member and two truths and a lie for the questions. Leadership students asked staff if they would participate and for their two truths and a lie. The top three winners in the school won gift cards and the top student in each class got a pack of candy bars. You can tell the point totals of each student when they finish the game on the bottom left corner of their screen.
The game did get a bit streaming laggy near the end. But I got numerous reports that kids weren’t too worried about points. They were having fun guessing the answers. There were also several comments from students like this – “So that’s what that teacher looks like behind the mask!” We were able to build connections with students and 15 of our staff.
Was it worth all the trouble? I definitely learned that a virtual pep rally is more complicated than one in the gym. I am way more comfortable with broadcasting through Microsoft Teams.
It was worth it. I saw my Leadership students engaged and excited. It was their pep rally. I heard a week worth of buzz and anticipation from students in general the week before. I got tons of thank yous from staff about how needed the pep rally was.
As one of my fellow staff members said, on that day it “felt like normal school”
If you have any questions about our pep rally or anything else please email me bdicksoncalgary@gmail.com
If you enjoyed this post please consider sharing it with others and following my blog.
Past Yote Street Boys Videos
Brent Dickson 