Amazing Race At The Reed School

By Nancy K. Crevier

Staying after school does not generally bode well for the children doing so, but Tuesday, April 11, was an exception for 44 sixth grade students at Reed Intermediate School.

Val Pachniuk and Rich Neeb’s classes were eager to remain behind when the last bell rang, taking part in an afternoon of solving riddles and answering questions designed by their classmates as they “traveled” about “Europe” in the halls of the Reed School.

In a takeoff of the popular CBS reality show, The Amazing Race, in which teams follow clues around the world for a million-dollar prize, 11 four-person RIS teams dashed about the otherwise empty halls as the culminating activity to a four-month study of European countries.

“The kids have had a lot of fun with this,” said Ms Pachniuk. “This is just the end of all the hard work they have done since December.” Other activities included the creation of a scrapbook depicting highlights of four regional European countries, “Kind of like a tour book, or a souvenir book; as if the kids had visited the countries,” explained Ms Pachniuk. Each child also selected one country, made up a character and wrote a narrative including cultural aspects of that country. “We had kids who were spies, rockers, fashion designers, photographers, all kinds of things. They were very imaginative and wrote some great stories,” she said.

Mr Neeb and Ms Pachniuk thought that the concept of having an RIS Amazing Race would appeal to the students, said Ms Pachniuk, many of whom were familiar with the program. The RIS Amazing Race incorporated different aspects of the curriculum, she said. “Some of the clues are math related, some have to do with language arts or social studies.”

The first riddle to be solved before leaving the classroom was a head-scratcher: When is it grammatically correct to say, “I is?” Everyone stalled out on that puzzler until Ms Pachniuk prompted them, “Think of ‘I’ as a letter in the alphabet….”

Once a team had figured out the answer to that question, they then went in search of the answer to the clue: This teacher’s name is a compound word. Every solution to the clues at each checkpoint led the teams ever closer to a triumphant return to the starting point. The trick was to successfully navigate all of the “pit stops” and be the first team to return to the room.

However, at each “pit stop,” classroom parents were on hand to quiz the groups as the teams careened from stop to stop.

“What style of government does Spain have?” one parent asked Katherine Lotrecchiano, who promptly responded with the correct answer. Nor did any of her teammates stumble over questions that might have befuddled some adults.

A penalty box awaited any team member who failed to correctly answer the two questions posed to them, and in this timed race, wrong answers were greeted with a chorus of dismay from fellow teammates.

Not just incorrect answers stood in the way of the team seeking to finish in first place. A “detour” set up in the gymnasium required a series of physical challenges, as well as deep thinking, before the team could continue. And in the cafetorium, the somewhat hurried and bumbled lyrics of “The Star Spangled Banner” echoed loudly as each team, urged on by more parents and teachers, bulldozed their way through that “roadblock” — while they wrapped one of their teammates in crepe paper.

In the end, it was the red-faced and breathless Team 6 that beat the clock. Their strategy? “We would run and do clues at the same time,” said Scott Keating.

“We helped each other with the worksheets,” John Corsi added. “It was a lot of teamwork.”