Benton Community Middle School uses the last forty minutes of each day as Bobcat Time. Teachers meet with students for a variety of reasons such as enrichment, make-up work, reteaching and reassessing. This is beneficial for students that have missed classes and/or who want to dig deeper into content. Middle School students have become self-driven learners so less Bobcat Time has been used for reteaching. This allowed the Middle School teachers to start the Bobcat Den Competition.
There are seven different seventh and eighth grade Bobcat Time homerooms that make up the Bobcat Den Competition. With minimal prompting from teachers, students selected a mascot name, used graphic design to create logos, and voted on colors. Each class developed a shortlist of core values that they felt should be a focus for themselves and their peers. The creativity continued when students built flags and banners. Classes made a video with music they created through an app, while others wrote a script and narrated their video. To think that was enough, a student knitted a stuffed Penguin for their mascot.
The first competition between the Bobcat Den was trivia. Each Den held a team trivia competition to determine a winner to represent their Den in the finals. Trivia included questions from four content areas: math, science, social studies, and language arts. Team winners from each Den met together in the Students Center to compete for the overall championship. The competition was streamed through Zoom to the classrooms to watch and play along. Middle School teachers are planning competitions and games that will test students' abilities in a variety of skills.