Before getting started with Classcraft, take some time to familiarize yourself with terms you’ll commonly see as you're setting up and managing Classcraft. If some of these concepts seem abstract for now, consider bookmarking this page and returning here whenever you need to!

Behavior settings - These settings define what students are expected to do or not. You can choose a handful of positive and negative behavior settings for each grade in your school.

Example: “Consider others' feelings when making a decision.”

Character - Starting in the Exploration phase, each student can have a unique character, a virtual person that represents them in the game. Students can even choose their character’s appearance!

Class progression - The class progression guides teachers, present setup steps, and tutorials. Except for the Introduction, teachers automatically progress when they give Experience Points to their students. Teachers can, however, manually progress at any time they want.

Class Store - Each teacher can use their Class Store to sell students items that are not part of your School Store. Unlike the School Store, it has no inventory management and only a simple text field for the item description. It can be accessed through the student's profile view.

Class Tools - These are tools that gamify the classroom, such as Random Events, Volume Meter, and Formative Reviews. As an administrator, you can see which Class Tools teachers in your district or school are using and how often!

Collaborative powers - Some powers benefit one or more students on a student’s team rather than the one who uses it. Some game-based powers are collaborative (like Protect) and some normal powers can be collaborative. Because they don’t directly benefit them, students who use collaborative powers receive a few Experience Points for their good deed.

Competencies - Where goals are very broad categories of expected behaviors, competencies are more specific expectations. They are sometimes referred to as “benchmarks” in MTSS documentation.

Crystals - Students spend this resource to use their special powers. Whenever a student levels up, they earn a single Crystal. Once in the Mastery phase, they may also regenerate a little bit every day, according to your settings.

Custom behaviors - Teachers can create behaviors unique to their classes that only they can edit or delete.

Damage - Another word for what happens when a student lose Hearts.

Delayed damage - Teachers can decide not to deal with damage right when it occurs. Delayed damage is not automatically handled and is instead sent to the teacher’s to-do list (and the students’ delayed damage queue). This enables students to use their powers to protect and heal each other before any Hearts are lost.

Engagement Score - You can see your Engagement Score on the School Dashboard. It provides you with a general idea of how engaged students and teachers are with Classcraft, which, in turns, informs you how engaged they are in general.

Experience Points - When students earn Experience Points, they progress in the game. Over time, enough Experience Points enable them to level up, earn Crystals, new powers, gears, and pets. When students behave as expected, they should receive Experience Points. Experience Points can also be earned with Class Tools or by completing classroom activities such as Quests or Formative Reviews.

Guide - Teachers who create their classes using the Quick Setup will not get access to the Class Progression. Instead, they can click the View Guide button on their Class Dashboard to view all the steps they need to complete to set up their class and the tutorials to help make it run smoothly.

Invitations - Before teachers can start using Classcraft with their students, they need to be formally invited.

If you’re a district administrator, once you finish setting up a school (creating goals, competencies, behaviors settings and adding teachers, students, and staff members), you’ll need to invite your school from your District Dashboard. This only enables the school administrators to review your settings.

School administrators need to invite their school from their School Dashboard after they’re done setting up their school (or reviewing the district’s setup).

Unless invitations are sent, no one can create a class or character!

Goals - Goals are broad categories of behaviors and skills that students should aspire to develop over the course of the year. They are refined by the more specific competencies.

Gold Pieces - This unique currency in Classcraft enables students to purchase new gear and real-life items from the School Store if you set it up. They can be obtained through leveling, quests, behavior settings, training pets, and other Class Tools.

Grade - Each student is assigned to a grade when you add them to your roster. By default, your school or district will be created with K12 grades. If you need a different scheme, contact your Classcraft Account Executive. 

Hearts - Hearts are unlocked in the Mastery phase and represent a character’s in-game energy. When a student displays negative behaviors, they’ll lose some Hearts. Only when they repeatedly misbehave and lose all their Hearts will they fall and have to complete a pledge. 

Kudos - Kudos are short, uplifting messages students can send to their peers to highlight their actions.

Level - An indicator of a student’s overall progress. The higher a student’s level, the more Experience Points they’ve earned, and thus the more positive behavior they’ve shown in class. Leveling up rewards students with a Crystal they can spend to activate a special power and Gold Pieces to buy new gear. It also unlocks new gear sets and powers!

Multi-Class - When a student plays a single character in multiple classes, they are considered Multi-Class. This does not change anything to their character’s statistics or powers.

Negative behavior - When a student displays a negative behavior, they’ll lose Hearts. Negative behaviors and Hearts management are unlocked in the Mastery phase.

Phase - Classcraft’s features are split into four phases to make the experience easier to approach for teachers. These phases are called: Discovery, Exploration, Collaboration, and Mastery.

Teachers navigate through these phases over time, as they progress in the experience. As an administrator, you can decide to lock the progression at a phase of your choice, restricting the features teachers have access to. This also makes it more likely that students will have a similar experience regardless of what class they're in.

Pledge - A random consequence students get when losing all their Hearts and falling. As they’re part of the school kits, this is something you can select ahead of time for the teachers in your school or district.

Positive behavior - Positive behaviors are what you expect your students to do. They can earn Experience Points, Gold Pieces, or both when displaying positive behaviors. There should proportionally be more positive than negative behaviors in your settings.

Powers - Powers are special abilities that students learn as they earn Experience Points and level up. They’re activated using Crystals. There are several types of powers (game-based, personal, collaborative, universal). You can edit the name, description, and cost of any power, except game-based powers, which are unlocked in the Mastery phase.

Priority - When you create or edit a behavior setting, you can decide how important it is for teachers and students to focus on. When you select a priority, the rewards or penalties are automatically balanced. Try having few high priority settings so that your expectations are clear for everyone!

Quests - Quests transform a teacher’s lesson plan into a learning adventure. Unlocked in the Exploration phase, they enable teachers to gamify their curriculum.

School Kit - A school kit contains positive and negative behavior settings, power descriptions, and pledges for one or more grades. Our templates provide School Kits for Early Elementary, Elementary, Middle, and High Schools but you can create and edit kits that correspond to the needs of your school.

School Store - When you set up a School Store, students can spend their in-game Gold Pieces on real-life items! All teachers can sell items to students, but, as needed, you can enable staff members to manage the Store. 

Student Boost - Any school administrator, teacher, or staff member with a Classcraft account can reward any student’s positive behaviors using the Student Boost feature.

Tag - Assign tags to students or teachers to indicate that they’re part of a particular group that has special needs. Teachers and staff members can’t see teacher tags. Students can’t see any tag, including their own.

Template - Templates are pre-made lists of goals, competencies, positive and negative behaviors, powers, and pledges that you can add to your dashboard and use as a base for your own School Kits.

Tier 1 intervention - Tier 1 intervention, sometimes referred to as Universal or Schoolwide Intervention are the behaviors, powers, and pledge settings shared by all the students in a given grade. These define the expectations you have for all of your students.

Tier 2 & 3 intervention - More specific than Tier 1 Intervention, Tier 2 intervention supports intervention for specific groups of students. Use tags to determine which students are part of the targeted group. Even more specific, Tier 3 intervention is targeted to individual students. When you create a Tier 3 behavior, you can assign it to one or more students for intensive intervention.

If you come across a term that you don’t know during your onboarding or after, check back here or check the teacher’s glossary. You can also contact support@classcraft.com for help!