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Burns Elementary launches K‑12 house system to build social competencies; staff tracking points via LifeSchool app
Summary
A Burns Elementary house system—seven houses with mascots and monthly point competitions—is being used to build the district’s graduate competencies. Staff described house names, mottos and a points system tracked with LifeSchool during a board retreat briefing.
Jerry (school staff) described a new K‑12 house system at Burns Elementary that groups students from multiple grade levels into houses designed to teach interpersonal and character competencies that align with the district’s and state’s profile of a graduate.
Jerry said the houses are named for values—Respect (owl), Community (beaver), Duty (ant), Optimism (sunflower), Honor (lion), Heart (dolphin) and Fairness (eagle)—and that each house has a color, crest and motto. Students and staff earn house points for observed behaviors such as following instructions, showing kindness, staying on task and helping others. The school displays house totals on a rotunda television and awards monthly prizes; Jerry said one house had roughly 1,800–1,900 points since the program started in September.
The district is using an app called LifeSchool to track points: teachers use a phone app and students have QR codes on lanyards that staff scan to record points. Jerry said the approach has increased student engagement and that the houses meet regularly and plan joint activities (examples include a Halloween celebration and hula‑hoop challenges where adults also participate).
District staff and trustees connected the house work to the state’s proposed graduate competencies in Chapter 3, noting that many of those skills are already embedded in K‑12 practice but will require more intentional tracking if the state requires documentation. Jerry and administrators said Burns’s house system reinforces social and problem‑solving skills in a way that can produce evidence if the district needs to demonstrate competency progress at scale.
Ending: School leaders invited the board to observe house activities; staff said the system is a district example of the kind of embedded, assessable learning progressions state rules are making more visible.
