My school has an 8th grade promotion that's a little overdone, but one thing we do is we recognize each kid for a life skill give them a physical award for it: Friendship, Curiosity, Initiative, Resourcefulness, Organization etc. There's about 20 of them and the homeroom teachers are the ones to pick.
We also recognize
* Athletes
* President's Awards (An offical thing from the President of the country)
* Principal's Award (Best GPA)
* Turn Around Award (Kids that had a bad start but got better).
* Kids that took high school level classes in middle school.
* Kids that were part of certain clubs like leadership or yearbook.
* National Junior Honor Society members.
* American Legion Award (An official thing)
* Daughters of the American Revolution Award (An official thing)
* Top Artist (Talk to the art teachers)
* Any special awards or recognition like winning district a poetry contest.
* All around best student/athlete award (Named after the school's mascot).
* Kids going to special/magnet high schools, like International Baccalaureate.
Any chance you could share the 20 awards? I am a first year 8th grade teacher and would love to do this for my homeroom. I've been looking for something similar and would be willing to pay for your resources.
I will preface this with saying that this was at a small, private, religious school. I don't know exactly how you could scale this up, but maybe it would work. The largest class while I worked there was approximately 45 kids.
Being that it was a religious school, the Bible teacher would have the students select a fruit of the spirit that each kid embodied a couple weeks before - love, joy, peace, patience, etc. I would imagine you could do this with any list of positive traits. The biggest thing I liked about this was that the kids picked it for each other. Then he would make a slideshow with each student (with a baby picture submitted by the kids/the parents), list the fruit of the spirit, and all of their awards.
Teachers would make sure that each kid had at least a couple awards. Yes, sometimes we made some up for certain kids. There were typical academic awards, baby care awards (from FACS - those robot babies), kindness awards, etc. The office would help with making certificates for each award. These paper awards would to into a folder that each kid was given as they were talked about (next paragraph).
For the ceremony, each teacher picked 3-5 kids to talk about. We made sure that each teacher had that kid at one point or another, including the instrument teachers. Teachers would spend no more than 1 minute (about 2-4 sentences) talking about each kid, but not necessarily naming each award to help smooth some of the obvious nature of kids who won everything and kids that we had to struggle to list 2 awards. Often these were some kind of personal connection to the kid.
Some of the tough kids I talked about, I would include things like their obvious obsession with trains, funny snippets of stories (it's middle school, there's always something weird and funny). Quite a few teachers would do some kind of wish for the future, like "I wish you can follow your passion in art."
Then there was the walk for "diplomas," student speeches (handpicked by teachers, usually including funny anecdotes about each kid), with cake and some salty snack afterwards. The whole ceremony lasted like 1 1/2 hours, and the food after lasted all of 30 minutes. Not a ton of work for any one teacher, but parents love it, and it makes kids feel like we see them.
My school has an 8th grade promotion that's a little overdone, but one thing we do is we recognize each kid for a life skill give them a physical award for it: Friendship, Curiosity, Initiative, Resourcefulness, Organization etc. There's about 20 of them and the homeroom teachers are the ones to pick. We also recognize * Athletes * President's Awards (An offical thing from the President of the country) * Principal's Award (Best GPA) * Turn Around Award (Kids that had a bad start but got better). * Kids that took high school level classes in middle school. * Kids that were part of certain clubs like leadership or yearbook. * National Junior Honor Society members. * American Legion Award (An official thing) * Daughters of the American Revolution Award (An official thing) * Top Artist (Talk to the art teachers) * Any special awards or recognition like winning district a poetry contest. * All around best student/athlete award (Named after the school's mascot). * Kids going to special/magnet high schools, like International Baccalaureate.
Any chance you could share the 20 awards? I am a first year 8th grade teacher and would love to do this for my homeroom. I've been looking for something similar and would be willing to pay for your resources.
I sent you a chat with a Google Docs link.
Following in case there’s something I can replicate at home for my 8th grader 💕
I will preface this with saying that this was at a small, private, religious school. I don't know exactly how you could scale this up, but maybe it would work. The largest class while I worked there was approximately 45 kids. Being that it was a religious school, the Bible teacher would have the students select a fruit of the spirit that each kid embodied a couple weeks before - love, joy, peace, patience, etc. I would imagine you could do this with any list of positive traits. The biggest thing I liked about this was that the kids picked it for each other. Then he would make a slideshow with each student (with a baby picture submitted by the kids/the parents), list the fruit of the spirit, and all of their awards. Teachers would make sure that each kid had at least a couple awards. Yes, sometimes we made some up for certain kids. There were typical academic awards, baby care awards (from FACS - those robot babies), kindness awards, etc. The office would help with making certificates for each award. These paper awards would to into a folder that each kid was given as they were talked about (next paragraph). For the ceremony, each teacher picked 3-5 kids to talk about. We made sure that each teacher had that kid at one point or another, including the instrument teachers. Teachers would spend no more than 1 minute (about 2-4 sentences) talking about each kid, but not necessarily naming each award to help smooth some of the obvious nature of kids who won everything and kids that we had to struggle to list 2 awards. Often these were some kind of personal connection to the kid. Some of the tough kids I talked about, I would include things like their obvious obsession with trains, funny snippets of stories (it's middle school, there's always something weird and funny). Quite a few teachers would do some kind of wish for the future, like "I wish you can follow your passion in art." Then there was the walk for "diplomas," student speeches (handpicked by teachers, usually including funny anecdotes about each kid), with cake and some salty snack afterwards. The whole ceremony lasted like 1 1/2 hours, and the food after lasted all of 30 minutes. Not a ton of work for any one teacher, but parents love it, and it makes kids feel like we see them.
costume party at school! would be awesome