by Grade 11 Stella
On the afternoon of December 13, amid expectations and student laughter, the first challenge party of working overtime at Jiaxing Senior High School had officially began. Students came together in their Speak Up teams and, under the leadership of the leader of each group, arranged and designed activities in different classrooms. Students completed in each group of challenges to collect more than five seals in return for a prize. This activity was not only wonderful but also very of fun. Different groups of students used their imaginations to come up with rich ideas for the activity. Before the activity began, each group came to their classroom to arrange the scene and props needed for the activity. When the teacher announced the start of the activity, the students filed out of each classroom and rushed out, filled with passion, to each interesting activity.
The teams first came to room 5 on the first floor. Here, the Giant Octopus group played tic-tac-toe by running. They made a tic-tac-toe game on the side of the classroom. Each team sent two players to compete against another team. Players took their pieces from the starting point, and ran to the big chess board to put three pieces in a row after the referee said go. On the referee’s call, two students sprung forth like arrows off the string of a general’s bow and rushed to the board. The players in the same team had to work together to put three pieces in a row as fast as they could. This was an unusual chess match in which the students exercised their minds and had a lot of exercise. The imagination of the Giant Octopus members who had created this game was even more admirable.
Then on the second floor Arctic Fox created an IELTS Vocabulary Guessing game where students came on the stage to describe the definition of a word and asked the audience to guess IELTS words. This not only made it difficult for students to guess the words, but also posed a challenge for students to describe them. Moreover, there were many long and difficult words which were more challenging for students with insufficient vocabulary.
The Golden Eagle team took over the reading room, and they built it into a scary escape room. Students had to go through three different challenges: finding the hidden words in the cards, figuring out who the murderer was, and finding the hidden bloody hands so that they could escape from the classroom. The activity soon became a hit with students lining up at the door in a long queue. However, the room was full of screams. This was because of the ghosts played by the Golden Eagle team members, the rich and varied scary props, and the solitary candlelight created a perfect scary atmosphere for the classroom, which made it more difficult for the students to enter the gate. After all, it was very challenging to keep calm in such a tense atmosphere.
And then on the third floor, we saw the Beavers’ game “Who Am I?”. The students sat in a circle and picked out themes such as fruit and food and then thought of a name for themselves. At the beginning of the game everyone counted off, and the student with the last number was eliminated directly, and if two or more students reported the same number, they had to compete to say each other’s names to ensure that they would not be eliminated. This activity had students use their memory and ability to respond to students’ challenges. Some students took a long time to remember their name for “composition”, and some of the students were able to remember easily. Students’ reactions were very funny.
Caribou’s Table Tennis Transmission was one of the most challenging activities of the day because it was extremely challenging to work together. The students passed the ping-pong ball from one student to the next using a pair of long chopsticks prepared in advance. Then, the last student had to successfully roll the ping-pong ball into the cup so the group could win. Many students failed in the challenge here, but some players with good cooperation skills successfully transported the table tennis balls to each other.
The last activity was called “Body Telephone” and was led by the Orcas. They asked all students to stand in a line and put on an eye patch. The first student got the corresponding words and showed them to the next student using his or her body language. Here we saw the actors swinging their bodies to try their best to make the word clear for the next student. As an onlooker, it seemed like we were watching a silent drama that made people unable to stop laughing. The students tried their best to act but some students could not understand what they were trying to show. Even the teachers joined the students to take part in the challenge, which added more fun to the activity and made it more exciting.
After a happy and interesting garden tour in the afternoon, the tired students still felt more than satisfied. After returning to the classroom, they shared their rich and colorful experiences with their classmates with great interest. This activity gave students burdened with heavy academic pressure a chance to have some fun, and the students’ participation and satisfaction with these activities further indicates the success of this day. I hope there will be more exciting activities waiting for us next year!