There are several awards you can give out. We give out a Citzenship award named after our Mascot (eagle), besides the honor roll and perfect attendance. Another suggestion could be a BUG Award-Bringing Up Grades or some type of attendance award such as a No Tardy or Improved Attendance Award.
I believe in awards. I think that we need to provide some non-academic for the students that may not be the brainiest. There a lot of children that do what is right everyday and will never make the honor roll. We need to make sure we recognize their accomplishments, too. I love those "Caught doing some good" stickers.

Our elementary school has an honor roll. We have an A honor roll and an AB honor roll. We have and assembly which the PTO gives each student a Certificate, ribbon..and coupons from local merchants. We also give candy or pencils or even book marks. We have a bullentin board displaying the names of the students who made the honor roll each 9 weeks. At the end of the school year PTO pays for all those students maintaining an A average all year to have lunch at a local restaurant. Having the honor roll is a great incentive for the kids.

Our school has a fantastic student board outside the office. It has a certificate with a picture and explanation of why on it. Even my kindergartener wanted to know how to get on the board.

I believe that you only have a very short time to teach children good study habits and the determination it takes to get good grades. That time is while they are in elementary school. I think that if giving them any kind of recognition helps to achieve that, do it. We give our Principals List (All A's All Subjects) students and our Honor Roll students (A's and B's) a certificate (from the school) and pencils from our PTO. The Principals List pencil is much 'cooler' than the Honor Roll pencil, but both pencils are very cool and highly sought after. It's a cheap way to say Good Job, Keep It Up. Nothing wrong with that...

For the kids that don't make it? There is always other awards like Most Improved, Good Citizenship, Attendance, Most Books Read, etc., any of which EVERY child has a chance to achieve in any given quarter. If a student still can't do it? It's called a life lesson. Learning to deal with dissapointment now may be one of the best lessons they do actually learn.

One thing: Three years ago I noticed that the Special Ed classes didn't have a certificate award for doing what is most times a students very best. I don't think all students have the ability to achieve A's and B's, but that doesn't mean they aren't giving it their all. They are rarely, if ever, going to make Principals List or Honor Roll, so I instituted certificate awards for them too. The first quarter the awards were given, there were less than 1/2 dozen recipiants. The second quarter? More than 3 dozen. It just went up from there.

I think it's worth it. Even in elementary schools.

Good Luck!

Our school has an Honors Assembly where the parents are invited and all students making the Honor Roll are called up front one class at a time. Then the Parent Club hosts Honor Roll Bingo. This is a 2 hour event in which all students who make the Honor Roll are excused from class to come a play Bingo for great prize packages that we get donated. We give every student a treat and have free giveaways, 4 or 5 per grade level, these are usually a soda and one of the extra large candy bars. The kids love these and usually share with their friends. When Bingo is over, the students go back to class and believe it or not, this actually inspires more students to make Honor Roll during the next grading period. Out of 450 students, the first trimester we had 288 make Honor Roll and are on target to have over 325 in this next grading period.
My son, actually trys hard in school, so that he can go to Honor Roll Bingo. He even won the grand prize last year, a $50 bill. We do have a few local businesses that will not donate to this event because they say it does not benefit all students. I disagree, I believe that having well over half of our students making Honor Roll does benefit all students and they deserve to be shown how proud we are of them.

We have an honors assembly for our honor roll. I kind of agree with Kathie about validity of it. More kids are on the honor roll than not.

However, we recognize the kids with all A's and the A-B honor roll. We also have the Principal's club for any student who brings one grade up a letter grade and doesn't let the others fall. It encourages everyone to try harder.