Clash of the Classes
Here at Nexus Connect, our goal is to increase student engagement and school spirit. One great way to do that is an entire week — or even a month — of pure competition, run by students, for students.
The Premise
Students love competition, and we love engagement. So let's create a rivalry between the four grades in each high school: freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, all racing to earn points for their class.
It's a simple structure, but it's a powerful one. A grade-vs-grade rivalry gives every student — not just athletes, not just club members — a team to belong to for a week. That's the whole point: everybody's already on a team, whether they know it yet or not.
Let's Do It
To set up your Clash Week, start with a prize worth winning. Kona Ice or ice cream bars are easy, crowd-pleasing starting points, but anything your student body will actually talk about works — early lunch, a class-only assembly, or bragging rights alone can be enough at some schools.
Next, plan your activities and how points get earned. A good rule of thumb: run a lunchtime activity every day that week except rally day, and make each one a chance to score points for your grade. You don't need to invent everything from scratch — take a lunchtime activity your school already runs and turn it into a competition.
A few starting points:
- Typing speed challenge — fastest typing staff member per grade (a staff member, not a student, just to keep even the appearance of bias out of it).
- Bucket brigade — whichever grade can move water from start to end the fastest, with the least spilled, wins the round.
- Trivia lunch — a few rounds of school or pop-culture trivia, grade against grade.
- Tug of war or relay races — simple, low-setup, high-energy, and easy to run in a quad or gym during a single lunch period.
Run your daily leaderboard live in Nexus Connect so students can check standings between classes, not just at lunch — a leaderboard that updates in real time turns a week-long competition into something students are actually tracking, not just hearing about secondhand. Pair it with a daily Instagram post or LMS/PA announcement to keep the standings visible everywhere your students already are.
Time to Rally
Make this next pep rally the Clash Rally — and make it the most student-focused rally you have all year. You can still introduce your sports captains and congratulate your teams, but make room for everyone else, too. Try having your games played by regular, non-involved students instead of the usual handful of familiar faces. Send ASB students into classes ahead of time to ask who wants in — you'll usually find more volunteers than you expect once it's framed as "your grade needs you," not just "who wants to be on stage."
Close the week by crowning the winning class live at the rally, right off the final Nexus Connect leaderboard standings — a real-time reveal is a much bigger moment than a number someone read off a clipboard.
Ready to run your first Clash Week? Get started with Nexus Connect and have your leaderboard live before the week begins.