Star Student of the Week
One of my favorite ways to build our classroom community is by featuring a Star Student of the Week each week in our classroom! It’s something simple, easy to keep track of, and students get sooo excited about it! At my school, everyone gets to be the star student at some point during the year. I do other things like positive notes home, and behavior/academic awards to celebrate students, but Star Student is a time for us to learn more about each person in our classroom, and celebrate them! Is there anything sweeter than seeing your students cheer each other on?! I think not! I’m sharing a few bits and pieces of my Star Student resource with you below and you can grab it HERE.
I start our Star Student of the Week during the 3rd week of school. I like to give myself (and my classroom families) time to get their lives together before starting right away. I set up a “Star Student” station at my Meet the Teacher Night (read more about that HERE) where families can pick a week for their child to be the star and sign up on the sign-up sheet. Families love being able to choose their date for Star Student. If families are unable to come to Meet the Teacher night to sign up, then I just end up choosing one of the dates that is remaining for them.
I pre-fill the sign-up sheet with dates that work for our classroom. I go through our school calendar and write down the weeks with less than 5 days, and the weeks before major holiday breaks because I like to take those weeks out of the Star Student rotation. Then I type in all the remaining available weeks in the sign-up sheet (without those wacky weeks that I wanted to remove). By the time I remove all the wacky weeks from the schedule, I usually have enough open weeks to last us until April. This is perfect because I don’t love doing Star Student in the month of May when everything is super crazy already. The week before their student is the star, I send home the Star Student poster for them to decorate, and a reminder note.
I set up my Star Student of the Week bulletin board in the hallway before Meet the Teacher night so that families can see my Star Student poster before they come into the room. I always make myself the Star Student on the first week so that students can learn about me, and they can see a sample of the Star Student poster.
Things to note: The poster in this photo is not from my Star Student pack. My school ordered these posters for us from Lakeshore Learning here, since it ended up being cheaper than having the posters from my pack blown up and printed.
The giant letters in this picture aren’t for sale because it’s just a font that was purchased and enlarged. The fonts used were AG Naps Fix Everything and AG Throwing Shade both by Amy Groesbeck Fonts.
The Star Student gets to do so many fun things! They get to create a Star Student crown, use the Super Star Supply Bin (a bin filled with smelly markers and crayons, fun pencils, etc.), they also receive a Star Student ribbon and certificate! The photo above also features a small version of the Star Student Poster that is in my Star Student pack. It can be enlarged to poster size, or you can use your own. Students love being able to present their poster to the class and then they get so excited to see it hanging out in the hallway for other students to see! The crown, ribbons, certificates, and poster are included in my Star Student pack for you.
My favorite part of Star Student of the Week is the creation of our class book. I continue to add a page each week and I put it in our classroom library for students to read. Each Star Student fills out the “All About _____” page and I combine all of the pages in a cute little “All About Our Class” book. The pages and cover are included in my Star Student pack for you.
If you’re interested in grabbing this resource so that you can start the Star Student tradition in your own classroom, you can click here to read more and purchase this resource.
