Scoring guide · Shoelace Learning
How your students earn points
Every way of scoring runs through answering questions. There is no route to points that skips the reading.
What separates a high score from a low one is accuracy. Rushing and guessing is the lowest scoring way to play, by a wide margin.
Why points matter
Points count in two ways. Students earn them exactly the same way in both.
- Student leaderboards, running all the time. Every student has a points total, and boards refresh over different periods, so there is always a new one to climb.
- Tournaments, when your school takes part. A tournament takes the points earned over a set period and ranks classes and schools against each other.
The rest of this guide is about how the points themselves are earned, which is the same either way.
The four ways to earn points
| What earns points | How much | How reading is involved | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answer streaks The main earner | 50 points per correct answer, as long as the answer before it was also correct | Directly. This is reading practice, scored. | Both games |
| Running | About 60 points a minute, once a run passes 500 m | Students answer questions to earn the lives a run needs, at Knowledge Orbs during the run, and again after a crash to recover. | Drift |
| Building upgrades | 10 points per building level, when an upgrade finishes | Upgrades need resources, and correct answers are what produce them. Each upgrade also needs a set number of correct answers before it will finish. | Dreamscape |
| Winning a challenge | 25 points for a win. A loss pays nothing, and it is a small part of most totals | Challenges have to be earned first. Every five questions answered gives a student one challenge token. | Dreamscape |
What this means for your students
Here is the same twenty minutes of play, three different ways. These are illustrative students, but the point values are the real ones.
As an example, 3 students spend 30 minutes answering questions and playing
The reason is that a correct answer only pays when the one before it was also correct. Two right in a row are worth 50 points. Two right with a wrong one in between are worth nothing. Guessing breaks that chain constantly, so a student who rushes spends most of their time rebuilding a streak they never get paid for.
Cleo shows the floor rather than a shortcut. She answers only what the game asks of her and spends the rest of her time running, and she still ends up well behind Ana. Doing the minimum is possible, but it does not win.
What to encourage: take time on each question, and keep going after a mistake. The next correct answer starts rebuilding straight away.
Accuracy counts for more than volume
| Getting right | Points from 60 questions |
|---|---|
| 1 in 4, roughly guessing | 188 |
| Half | 750 |
| 7 in 10 | 1,470 |
| 9 in 10 | 2,430 |
| All of them | 3,000 |
Why every student can reach a good accuracy
Accuracy here is not a measure of who the strongest reader is. Our learning engine matches the content to each student, keeping it easy enough that they do not get frustrated and hard enough that they keep improving. A student working two grade levels below their peers sees material pitched to them, not to the class.
That matters for the tournament, because it means accuracy reflects care and attention rather than raw reading ability. A struggling reader who slows down and reads properly can score as well as a confident one who rushes. Every student in your class is competing on effort, at their own level.
How your class score is worked out
This is the part most worth your attention, because it is the one thing that is not about reading.
A class score is not the total of everyone's points. It is that total divided by every student on your roster, including students who have never opened the game.
| Class | On roster | Playing | Points earned | Class score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ms. Alvarez | 10 | 8 | 16,000 | 1,600 |
| Mr. Boyd | 25 | 8 | 16,000 | 640 |
What helps: having more of your students play, rather than a small handful playing a lot. And if any students are no longer in your class, archive or remove them so they are not bringing your class score down.
Where to put your energy
If you take only three things from this guide:
- Accuracy over speed. Reading carefully is worth up to 13 times more than rushing, for the same number of questions. It is the single biggest factor in a student's score.
- Breadth over intensity. One more student taking part lifts your class average more than your keenest student playing harder, because the score divides across your whole roster.
- Either game works. Playing either one leads to good results, so let students pick the game they enjoy.
Questions you might have
Can a student score well without really reading?
No. In both games you cannot get anywhere without engaging with the learning content. Every route to points runs through answering questions, including running in Drift, which needs answers to earn lives, gives more at Knowledge Orbs, and asks another after a crash. This is a deliberate difference between our games and most game based learning: there is no version of playing that skips the reading.
Is there any way to buy an advantage?
No. Nothing purchasable affects points.
Do points from both games add together?
Yes. Each student has one total, and both games feed into it. Point values in this article are exact. The example students are illustrative.
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