How do you give every student more opportunities to use a language when class time is limited?
A week of language practice, shared ambition and opportunities for students to shine: The 4th Annual ImmerseMe Cup 🏆 brought schools together from October 22-29.
Students earned XP through language activities, worked toward personal awards and contributed to their school totals. Alongside the scoreboard, three Mini Competitions encouraged them to explore how language connects with their own lives.
A week of language practice in numbers.
19 million XP earned (2.7M / day)
1 million words recorded (142,000 / day)
335,000 responses (48,000 / day)
3,100+ hours of collective language learning
Congratulations to Erie High School, who won the ImmerseMe Cup with a staggering 4.88M XP, followed by the Vocational Training Council, Hong Kong, with 4.76M XP, and Seymour Independent School District with 3.86M XP! 🥳
Thank you to every student and teacher who took part!!!
In total, 511 individual students earned an award in recognition of their effort.
Bronze
5,000 XP
(~1 hour)
228 students
Silver
15,000 XP
(~2 hours)
108 students
Gold
30,000 XP
(~5 hours)
79 students
Laureate
50,000 XP
(~8+ hours)
96 students
A chance for quieter students to shine.
Catherine Zwink, French teacher at the winning school, described what she saw during the competition:
"The ImmerseMe Cup gave my students an opportunity to show what they are capable of, a real chance to SHINE! Students who are unsure of themselves and shy came out on top and won the admiration of their classmates and even surprised their teachers and parents. I wholeheartedly recommend participating because the confidence and added knowledge that students have gained from participating in the ImmerseMe Cup is worth the effort and pays off in their future language learning."
Catherine's experience shows how a language challenge can help students feel less anxious about participating. Students who were shy or unsure of themselves found an opportunity to succeed and earn recognition from their classmates.
Students at Erie High School put their language skills into action during the ImmerseMe Cup, helping their school claim first place 🥇 on the global scoreboard. Photo courtesy of Catherine Zwink, Erie High School.
A shared challenge with individual opportunities to practice.
Video courtesy of Spanish teacher Jeannette Armendariz, Frederick High School.
At Frederick High School in Colorado, a classroom video shared by their Spanish teacher Jeannette Armendariz, captures students working individually on ImmerseMe, with a shared ambition for their school.
“They are very engaged,” she says, before adding: “We're going to be number one in the district.”
The video shows students using their own devices to interact with language activities. This is how a shared classroom challenge can make space for individual practice: students can listen, respond and repeat an activity at their own pace. With ImmerseMe's AI Chat, they can also hold conversations shaped by their own responses, creating opportunities to use language beyond a fixed script.
For teachers with a large class, this means more students can practice simultaneously while the teacher circulates and provides support. Each learner has opportunities to respond without waiting for a turn in a whole-class exchange.
More ways to take part.
Alongside the main XP competition, our three Mini Competitions gave students another way to participate and earn recognition. Each challenge was designed to take around 5–10 minutes of active effort, inviting students to connect language learning with their own experiences.
This year's challenges explored:
Lost in Translation: finding a target language expression whose literal translation sounds surprising or funny, then explaining its actual meaning.
Language in the Wild: spotting the target language outside the classroom and sharing what makes that discovery interesting.
The Cultural Lens: reflecting on how learning a language has helped students understand a cultural expression or practice.
Each Mini Competition offered a certificate and a $20 voucher for the winning entry.
These short challenges added a different focus to the week. Students could share an observation, explain a discovery or express a personal connection to the language they were learning. They provided another opportunity to contribute alongside working toward an XP award.
One student's Mini Competition reflection brought the connection between language and culture closer to home. In an email shared by their teacher at Longmont High School, the student explained that learning Spanish had helped them recognize a family celebration as part of their cultural heritage.
In the student's words:
“The language that I’m learning is spanish it helped me find out that the day my family celebrated Rosca de Rejas was part of our culture. Nothing in my native language [English] ever talks about this event only in the other language i’m learning.”
That reflection captures what we hoped these short challenges would encourage: students noticing how another language can help them understand their own experiences. A familiar family tradition became something to explore, ask questions about and connect with their learning.
We'll introduce different prompts next year, keeping the same idea: a short, achievable challenge that encourages students to think about where language learning can take them.
Authentic experiences shaped by teachers.
Maria (Bel) Cellario Castro, Spanish teacher at Longmont High School, has worked with ImmerseMe since its early stages. She described the value of bringing authentic language and culture into the classroom:
“Having partnered with the ImmerseMe team since the early stages of their journey since I piloted for adoption to our district. I’ve seen firsthand how their vision to transform language learning has come to life. By grounding their platform in real-world authenticity—like authentic video footage of families in Colombia and immersive 360-degree cultural experiences—they have built a genuinely valid and functional tool. They consistently listen to teacher and student feedback, working tirelessly to align their modules with Spanish standards, textbooks, and curriculum units. Furthermore, their innovative integration of AI has taken their display and activities to an entirely new level, keeping students deeply engaged.“
Photo courtesy of Maria (Bel) Cellario Castro, Spanish teacher at Longmont High School.
Building on a week of effort.
The Cup brings several elements together:
a shared deadline,
clear personal milestones,
a school goal, and
opportunities for individual expression.
Students can work toward their own award while contributing to their school's total.
Catherine's account of quieter students finding success, and Jeannette's video of her class working toward a shared ambition, show what that structure can look like in practice.
The event lasts a week, but the opportunities to practice continue. Throughout the year, ImmerseMe gives students space to rehearse real-world language, receive feedback and build confidence through repeated attempts.
Thank you to every student who participated, every teacher who encouraged them, and every school that shared a glimpse of the Cup in action. Congratulations to our winning schools and all 511 student award recipients!
Want your students to be part of the next challenge? Get in touch with ImmerseMe to explore how individual language practice and school-wide events could fit your program.
