Art Awards
Art Awards
If you’re looking for ways to reward positive behaviour in your classroom let me give you some of my tricks and insights.
I have walked into many classrooms over the years and found treasure boxes full of plastic prizes, piles of sticker books and reward charts. While that’s all fun and exciting I have found some issues with these systems. Firstly, the environment doesn’t need more cheap plastic toys and teachers shouldn’t have to spend their own money on these. Stickers are a bit better but still don’t recycle and can be found all over the floor when they fall off hands and uniforms. Reward charts for young children can be difficult when there is a week in between rewards, it can feel like eons until they reach an end of term goal, and in my experience, they can work for a while then lose momentum.
The most successful award system I have implemented is based on developing intrinsic motivation. It connects to the Art curriculum and school values. It rewards kindness and effort. What is it? Simple card awards given out at the end of each class.
So let me start by explaining the categories:
Creative Genius- for being fearlessness in their art making, being original, experimenting in a new direction, made art connections, contributed to discussion about their work, artists and art making.
Awesome Effort- pretty obviously about effort, those that tried hard, who were focused, this is a great award for those challenging students who had a great session and regulated well.
Helpful Hero- This is very motivating to remind them of during clean up time, watch some of them go on that pack up routine when you say you’re still deciding on the helpful hero! It’s also great if someone has helped you with something, again a great one to engage those who need a job to do even if directed by you. I also like to recognise those who’ve gone out of their way to be helpful to someone else- maybe a student who arrived late and needed help setting up, or someone who washed someone else’s paintbrush without being asked.
Super Supporter- So this award is special. Many years ago I had a student who felt that there should be a student nominated award so we workshopped it and this award was created. The students nominate someone else in the class and give a reason. It could be they were inspired by their work, or they shared art materials with them. Maybe they were really encouraging or gave them a great compliment or just helped them through remembering art making steps. Every nomination gets noted (just with a mark on the roll) and they can accumulate from week to week, so no one gets upset.
This is how it helps the students:
Focuses and reminds students on what behaviours are award-worthy and what is valued.
Guides culture in the art room by encouraging effort, helpfulness and support.
Gives them something to show their teacher and parents.
Provides a sense of recognition.
This is how it helps your teaching practice:
It promotes a supportive encouraging culture.
It promotes effort and a growth mindset.
It teaches equity- I make sure I mark down who gets an award each week on the roll.
It helps you tune in to kids who haven’t got an award yet due to behaviour.
It reminds me to check-in with the quieter students who haven’t received one yet.
It helps me reflect on the culture in the classroom, are we supporting each other?
It allows me to provide face-to-face feedback every lesson.
It gives feedback to the classroom teacher about students.
It guides me to tune in to the class even while I’m cutting up materials for the following one!
This is how it helps school culture and promote positive school wide behaviours:
It connects to School Values
It connects to Positive School Wide Behaviours
It is supported by educational research into the importance of effort and feedback.
It teaches personal capabilities like empathy, support for others, equity and collaboration.
You can give 3 or 4 every class, that way you’ve covered the whole class by the end of term. If you only give one a week it will take you most of the year and you want to reward the positive behaviours more consistently than that.
Some students have more awards than others as some need them. You know the kids I mean- many neuro-diverse and trauma kids will need additional rewards so sometimes I do give extra. I talk to students about wanting to share the love, so want to share around the awards each week before second awards are given out. Having a record is helpful for students who struggle with thoughts that others are getting more than them- you can show them they have the same as everyone else.
Not every kid will treasure these awards and I do sometimes find these discarded, however with the amount I give out each week it’s much less than you’d think- I’ve even had Year 10 students back on work experience tell me they’ve still got their whole collection years later. I’ve certainly had to write out extra award card when it’s been lost and caused upset as they are so valued. Many families tell me they have a collection displayed on the fridge at home.
It only takes me 5 minutes at the end of class. In a short art session that seems like it’d be stressful but having done this for years, I assure you that 5 minutes to build positive behaviours is a worthwhile investment. I have seen it improve enthusiasm for clean-up time, classroom management, educational outcomes, engagement and transform classroom culture. You can’t get to the art teaching if you aren’t also working on all that.
Best of all- you can get all of this for the investment of what is essentially a bulk printed business card. I get thousands of them printed through VistaPrint online for $100 and just click reorder as I need more, budgeted annually. I even just used one of their templates and off I went. I use a pen to tick the box and handwrite the name and grade quickly as it’s awarded.
If you’re looking to promote consistent behaviour beyond the art room and across the whole school, look no further than my Golden Paintbrush Trophy
Last year I instigated a trophy system amongst the Specialist teachers. Each Specialist has a trophy they can award a class that demonstrated the best school values for the week. This is presented at assembly with much ritual and fanfare and travels from classroom to classroom around the school. This encourages group accountability and classroom culture and gives students an awareness that their positive behaviour needs to be consistent across all their classes. It is displayed for a week in a classroom with much pride.
Handmade- I got a paintbrush and using dowel and glue attached it to a paper towel stand then spray painted it gold.
I hope you’ve found this useful. If you have, it’d be lovely if you subscribed. Let me know if you give your own version of my Art Awards a try X Emily
