4 Excellent Uses of School Awards

It's the end of the year and time for the school awards ceremony. The students are either bored or excited, depending on whether or not they are receiving an award. The teachers are just glad that the year is over. If you are the administrator, you are wondering what you could do to make your student awards program better.

One way to improve your K-12 school awards program is to take a close look at the things you are rewarding. Can everyone qualify for student awards? Can students who do not do well academically still earn student awards?

Here are some uses of scool awards that you may or may not have considered already.

Chances are you already have a perfect attendance award as part of your student awards program, but is this really a good reward to have? After all, can students really control whether or not they are sick? Changing attendance awards is one way you can change your awards program.

• Attendance Certificate

Instead of awarding perfect attendance, why not award a certain level of attendance? You can choose a certain number of school days and reward all students who attended school that number of days or more with student awards. This way you can still reward those who put in the effort of coming to school, while not penalizing those who got sick.

Besides awarding attendance, K-12 school awards can also be used to reward students who show good character. Character is, of course, a difficult thing to judge. However, you could choose a character quality each month that you want students to focus on. Students who exhibit that quality could be rewarded with a certificate.

Of course this type of award does not have to be given at the end-of-the-year school awards program. You could hand out these student awards in monthly assemblies. By not limiting the number of students who can achieve the award, every student in your school can have student awards to aim for.

You are probably wondering what character qualities you could reward with these student awards.

The answer to that question depends on the age of your students. Young students could work on friendship, truthfulness, and responsibility. Older students could work on respect, loyalty, and self-discipline.

We cannot discuss K-12 school awards without discussing the honor roll. Students who excel in school typically are awarded with school award certificates or school award pins, depending on their age. These are almost always handed out at an awards ceremony.

Now, consider this regarding honor roll awards: Honor roll awards do not have to be for only those students who achieve nearly perfect grades. You could have several levels of honor roll to give all students awards to work towards.

Of course, these student awards do not have to include a student's entire GPA. You can have subject specific honor roll awards as well. The students who excel in, say, history could be rewarded for that subject alone.

A final use of student awards is in physical education. While some students may struggle in academic subjects, they do excel in physical education. This is another area in which all students can compete for awards or plaques.

One way that many schools reward students for physical fitness is by setting up fitness goals. Students would need to accomplish a set number of fitness tasks by the end of the year. Those students that do well receive special student awards.

The point is, school awards do not just have to be for the students who excel at academics. From attendance to physical fitness, there are many other areas where a distinguished school award can be given out. Use your imagination, and soon you will be rewarding many more of the students in your school for their hard work and accomplishments.