Golden Ring Awards

My kids just had their Golden Ring exams in school last Thursday. You’re probably wondering what that is. I had no idea too back when I first heard about it four years ago but it’s actually a cool idea that their school came up with in order to give special awards to their students.

The Golden Ring Awards are special awards given to students who can perform certain skills that are usually skills of students two levels ahead of them. So, for example, since Zoe is in the third grade, she was tested for skills normally performed by fifth graders. Since Ziya is in the second grade, she was tested for skills normally performed by fourth graders. The school usually gives a list of skills that the kids will be tested in and the kids, with the help of their parents, can just choose which skills they will be tested on. If the kid is able to perform the skill satisfactorily, then he or she will be given a Golden Ring Award for the skill by the end of the school year. I really think this is a great idea especially for those kids who don’t normally perform well academically but do well on certain skills. 

Well, this year we only chose four skills for Zoe and three for Ziya. However, the school decided to let them take all of the skill tests just in case we didn’t know they could do them already. I think there were a total of about ten skills for Math and Communication Arts. We won’t know the results until the awarding ceremony though but I’m not really nervous about it. They’ve done this for four years already and normally they do get the awards, sometimes even for other skills that we didn’t choose but they were tested on anyway. 

Does your school give special awards too?