Celebrating student success is a powerful yet under utilized tool in an educator’s tool belt.
Think of how fun it is to be celebrated. It’s a good feeling. It makes you want to work harder, do better, and get more praise and recognition.
Now think about how often you celebrate student success in your classroom. Besides giving them a grade, or occasionally recognizing them verbally, how often do students get recognized for their academic successes that they attain in your classroom?
One Step Further
With the above in mind, let me ask you this: how often do you celebrate your lowest-performing students? The ones who would benefit the most from seeing and feeling their growth and success.
An Example
I utilize skills based learning stations in my math classroom – where I target each student’s need and remediate them one skill at a time until they master the skills needed to get up to grade level (or accelerate them accordingly if they don’t need remediation).
It’s very effective. But one year I had a student who came in very low. We were working on two-step equations, and I had students in stations for:
- Adding Integers
- Subtracting Integers
- Multiplying and Dividing Integers
- One-Step Equations
- Two-Step Equations
Cecilia, my low student, started on adding integers – and she struggled! She wasn’t the only person on that skill, but after two weeks, she was the only student still there.
After three weeks, she was the only person in the first learning station. She got discouraged, and honestly, so did I.
But I continued to provide her with increased interventions, and she continued to work on adding integers. Then, finally, she got it! She mastered the skill and progressed to the next skill.
I celebrate student success with pennants and a ceremony. At the ceremony, we all clap, the student is recognized, and they get to put their name under the pennant that shows their academic success. She was beaming!
I also called home to share with her parents.
The next day, she started on subtracting integers. She immediately passed it and progressed to the next skill, which she also mastered in short time. She quickly found herself caught up with most of the class, and passing many of her peers. She had tasted success, and it gave her the drive to want more. It was contagious. This is why you need to celebrate student success.
That First Success
Finding success is a great feeling. It makes us want more. Unfortunately, often in academics, students aren’t recognized for their success, so they rarely get that good feeling.
Sometimes, because we aren’t providing immediate feedback, students don’t know they aren’t finding success. And sometimes the student has racked up so many bad grades, that though they are successful, they still look at their grade in their class and don’t feel like a success.
Some Recommendations
I do recommend providing immediate feedback on every question your students work on while they are still in the learning process. I also recommend remediating students who don’t master the concept you taught them and allowing the new assessment grade to replace the previous one that showed that they didn’t have mastery.
But I also recommend celebrating success. It will help your students’ sentiments towards your class and motivate them to continue to do well so that they can experience more success.
How to Celebrate Student Success
Celebrating student success can be a challenge since you’re potentially celebrating lots of students, and often. So you need to provide an inexpensive way to recognize them and make them feel excited.
I don’t recommend a treasure box, since we could potentially be giving lots of items away every week – which could get expensive. Plus, treasure boxes don’t work once students reach a certain age.
Here are some fun, inventive ways to recognize your students’ academic success.
Certificates
Certificates are a great way for students to feel recognized, and for them to bring something special home to their parents.
Privileges
What privileges can your students earn for doing well? Think past the ‘no-homework pass.’ Think about things like leading the line, listening to music while they do the bell ringer, lunch with the teacher, or working on a fun activity in class. (If my students did well, they got to watch a segment of an episode of Shark Tank and do the math involved.)
I recommend it being something that each student can earn, as opposed to the whole class earning the reward – but it’s okay to have special activities that the whole class earns once they reach a certain benchmark.
The top award in my class was always a ‘high-five’ from me. I taught middle school, and I always made it sound like it was such a big deal, the students enjoyed playing along with me and being a bit goofy at my expense.
Think about something special your students can receive when they reach academic success
My Favorite Method
As already alluded to, I use pennants to celebrate success.
I put pennants around the room, and put students in a skills based learning station based on the math concept they are working on. I keep them in that station until they master it. Once they do, we celebrate them by clapping and recognizing them, and then the student gets to put their name under the pennant hanging in the room. An added bonus is that this is a great way to collect data and show to your administrators.
An alternative method with pennants is to give the students the pennant and let them decorate it and put their name on it. Then you can hang the pennant in your classroom or let the student take it home.
Conclusion
Recognizing your students’ academic success will create a positive learning environment and provide a motivating factor to help students want to succeed.
Rewards can be costly, but recognition is affordable. You can download this free pennant maker so that you can make pennants for your students based on whatever skill they’re working on.
To learn more about how I use skills-based learning stations to reach all of my students, click here.
