I had my last class with my grade 6’s today and we had lots to do:
- Self assessment of our major project and the semester’s work (Google Forms)
- Course Reflections (Google Forms)
- Blog post to our partners at The Children’s Storefront, NY (Kidblog)
- Recognition – recognizing and celebrating our accomplishments (both individually and as a class)
- Sharing our work from the online safety project.
There was an awards ceremony this week that gives certificates to “deserving” middle school kids; the teachers decide the prizes. If I had to give certificates, I would give one to each of my students and let them fill in what it was for, and keep it private. And then I’d have each child fill out what they accomplished during the class and put it in our accomplishments bowl and have a celebration of our accomplishments. The celebration could be free time (we agree on free time activities at the beginning of the course), a community building activity, a round of clapping, socializing with food, or whatever else we agree upon as a class. In my class today, I made the “speeches”, including recognition of the students in the class who participated in the musical performance, and we all clapped. But that’s going to change next year: I will let the students decide what they want to recognize and I won’t limit their accomplishments to things that happened during my class only. After all, life doesn’t happen in neat boxes.
Update:
Just saw a post by Joe Bower in my twitter stream. I’m linking it here as a reminder to myself to use it for inspiration next year.
I love the idea of a class celebration of all of the accomplishments of the year. That sounds like a more meaningful way to celebrate what the year was about than a typical award ceremony. Great idea Damianne!
I like this idea. I think about the sad eyes who are never recognized publicly.