School presenter outlines 'Level Up Fridays' to balance intervention and enrichment

Unidentified Speaker 1, a presenter at a district meeting, outlined a redesign of Friday intervention and enrichment sessions, now called “Level Up Fridays,” aimed at increasing student and parent engagement by borrowing gaming language and structuring time for both intervention and enrichment.

The program divides Friday into an ELA block (about 8:00–8:45 a.m.), a break that features specialty staff (art, music, PE) for enrichment, and a math block (about 9:15–10:00 a.m.). "We've gone to calling them our level up Fridays, trying to play a little bit into the computer game and gaming world of the kids these days," the presenter said. The goal is to avoid two hours of single-focus work and give students exposure to multiple instructional approaches.

The presenter said teachers identify by Wednesday the prior week's intervention or enrichment focus; on Thursday staff hold a 15-minute meeting to determine which students will fit. "We said every teacher has to invite a minimum of 4 of their own students to their interventions or enrichments in the classroom, but we wanted to cap interventions at 6, enrichments at 10," they said. The caps are intended to preserve small-group intervention intensity while allowing larger enrichment offerings.

To keep Fridays focused on instruction rather than catch-up, the school added a homework club during lunch and recess so students can finish incomplete assignments earlier in the week. The presenter described a new attendance-tracking form that records who was invited, whether parents returned the permission slip and whether the student attended; repeated nonattendance triggers outreach to families. Regular attendees will earn punches on a 10-punch card and receive a small reward after 10 visits.

Staff involvement and data collection are central: the presenter said the RTI (response to intervention) team runs six-week cycles and expects teachers bringing students to RTI to present supporting data. The change is intended to make Friday time more intentional and to increase participation after historically low Friday attendance.

The district plans to monitor invitations and turnout and to adjust the program based on staff feedback and attendance data. The presentation closed with the presenter saying the approach has "took a lot of time for our staff to put this together" but is "clicking along."