Annual Awards Show - Academy Awards Style!

First year awards - a little different
from what I give now

Each year, I throw my students an end of the year party and hand out awards.  However, my awards aren't your typical "Student of the Year" bit.  Instead, our party has an Academy Awards theme where students win trophies, give speeches and movies are shown!  This year is my FOURTH annual awards show and I can say it gets better each year.

My students are nominated and awarded trophies based upon the videos they create in technology class which is guided by myself and the formal technology teacher.   The students write, film and edit a video on a subject/topic chosen by me.  In years past, students created videos for the American Revolution where they put a modern twist on the problems and events that occurred, they wrote short stories that taught a lesson, stop motion photos (again on the American Revolution) and finally this year commercials were in conjunction with our school-wide annual Heritage Day.  All my students were assigned a country from Asia and had to create a travel commercial that promoted travel to their country.  You can see the plan sheet here.

Invitation to event

Once the videos are complete, I sit down with the technology teacher and we determine different categories for the students' videos to win in.  We try to keep to traditional Academy Awards such as Best Acting, Best Editing and so forth.  After we have selected the winners (all students win some type of award), I order my trophies from Crown Awards where I have the students' names and category they won engraved on them.  These trophies are always a HUGE hit with both the students and parents.

With the help of parent volunteers, I host the award show in our Parish Hall.  The parents help me decorate the hall with our theme in mind and a red carpet is rolled out for them to walk on.  I send out formal invitations about three weeks in advanced to all my students and their families.  Everyone who attends is treated to a buffet dinner, watch the videos that were produced and see an end of year slideshow that I create of the class.  (Students are also given a copy of all the videos and slideshow on a DVD.)  After students are awarded their trophy, they get to make a short acceptance speech.  These are always an absolute blast to hear! They also hear a final speech from me about our time together.  Prior to the end of the show, I make sure I get an individual picture with each of my students so that I can frame it and give it to them on the last day.

A past student and I at the first award show. 

Both the students and I look forward to this event all year!  What events do you do with your class at the end of the year?