Meet Henry the little red hoover cheering on our cleanest classrooms
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
At Geoffery Field Junior School, there's a character the children have come to know well. His name is Henry, and every week he moves into a different classroom staying only with the pupils who've earned him.
Henry is the trophy behind our Cleanest Classroom Award, a community initiative we've now been running for three years. It's a simple idea: encourage pupils to take pride in their classroom, work as a team, and take responsibility for keeping their space clean, safe and welcoming to learn in.
Each week, our supervisor Sharon and her team walk the classrooms and vote for the one that's put in the most effort. The winning class gets to keep Henry for the week and there's real pride in seeing him sitting at the front of the room.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER AT THE END OF THE YEAR
The initiative builds to the end of year assembly, where Sharon, Diego and Lynne go along in person to present the award to the class with the best record over the year. It's one of the highlights of our year too.
We thank the children for taking part and hand over the trophy, which we provide, along with a certificate carrying our branding that the school puts together. We also bring flowers for the teacher and teaching assistant, because none of this works without them backing it every single week.
Every child in the winning classroom gets a small gift as well. This year we gave each of them a mini pot plant with a bag of seeds to grow themselves, plus a 'You Are a Star' keychain and card something small to take home that says their effort was noticed.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Cleanest Classroom Award isn't just about tidiness. It gives children a reason to look after the space they spend so much of their day in, and a bit of healthy competition between classes to do it. Watching them care about their environment now is exactly the kind of habit we'd love to see carry through into later life.
It's become genuinely well supported across the school, and it's something we'd be glad to introduce at other schools too, wherever we have the right structure in place to support it.
