There's two ways that I think would work.
The first is to send home flyers with a return section asking for both parents and students that would be interested in taking part.
The drawback to this is that not all those that send in the return will actually make the event, and others that may not send it in will show up.
The second way, the way I used, was to send home a flyer explaining the event and that interested parents and students can sign up to take part at the door. Had a couple of members signing people in. All we really did was have 2 baskets (one for parents/one for students) and wrote the interested person's name on a piece of paper and put it in.
Next, once we were ready to start the event we selected one parent name from the raffle and this was the "contestant". I then selected 5 students to come on up and take a seat in the "classroom". I had teachers on stage near the five desks to show the students where to sit and to also guide them to write out their name on pieces of card stock that were realy to go. These were place in holders at the front of each desk.
Our Principal was the Jeff Foxworthy of the event and did the little welcome, who's your child, what class, what do you do for a living, etc. spiel. Then we showed the categories. We then had the contestant select one of the students from the class to be their classmate. We had a second podium set-up near the contestant, but far enough where they could see their answer. Same for the other students who were on the other side of the stage. This way they can write down their answers and we had hand signals that the teacher could use to indicate to the Principal that a specific student from the classroom had the correct answer. This way the Principal/host can call on a student to show their correct answer.
If a student is selected and is not used by the contestant then after two questions they are sent back to the classroom (and cannot be selected again, but can still answer/participate). If a student is used, meaning the contestant compied, peeked or was saved, then the student is sent back to the classroom. We tried to make sure that all 5 of the students had some interaction with the game, even if they didn't get called upon to be the classmate.
Using the format that I did, there are 8 questions, besides the final question which the contestant does not have a classmate for. So there were times when some students were not selected, but again we tried to make sure that they all had a chance to be involved.
In a couple of cases we went through all 5 of the classmates. For example, one was used for the first 2 questions, the next was used for the Peek on the 3rd question, next was used on the save for the 4th question, and then the last was used on the 5th question (copy). For this, being that there was just one other question we just had one of the same five students selected for the last question. This doesn;t happen too often.
But if you are going to follow the same format as the show, say for 5th graders, then you would have two more questions than I did. This means that it is more possible to use up your students. You may want to think about changing them out if this happens, but again, even with 2 more questions, it is unlikely.
So we usually go through 6 or 7 contestants, which means 30 - 35 students. That's about a 3rd of our total students for that grade, but about half of the ones that show up.
Sure not aall students that want are able to be involved, but the raffle method seems to be the most fair.
In addition, we asked questions for both students and parents in between, while the new contestant and classmates are getting settled. This got others involved and we gave away extra prizes (spirit wear hats, t-shirts, etc.)
We also gave away a free book to every student at the end of the night and a rubber spirit bracelet to all of our student classmates. The parents won gift cards based on how they did in the game.
Hope this helps,
PresidentJim
