Inside: Even our best and brightest students can transform into squirrels as the end of the year approaches. That leaves us at the end of our patience just when we need it the most. In order to succeed, teachers need to plan end of school year activities that keep students motivated to participate. You’ll find my favorite smiley ideas below.
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For teachers, there is nothing as exciting as opening your planner and noticing that you only have one or two pages left. It’s hard not to smile when you reach the 4-week countdown to summer. We love teaching, but we need that time to recharge, reflect, and get new ideas to try next year.
Well…. Actually, it can be hard to smile. You’re in a room surrounded by students who can taste summer, and they seem to feed off of your exhaustion. Your sweet angels start acting out for a variety of Maslov related home-life issues, and because standardized testing has sucked the life out of everyone. Ultimately, they know as well as we do that in a few short weeks our time together is ending, and that brings up all the feels.
Instead of processing such big emotions of loss and elation, they GO NUTS! LIke really, insane. One May afternoon, a normally quiet 7th grade Pre-AP student lunged from his chair, snatching a classmate’s important paper. He marked all over it before I could intervene. Another year a 6th grader threw a paper airplane across the room, and it stuck straight out of my ponytail. Unexplained, insane behavior.
My hypothesis is that If you have built any kind of meaningful relationship with them, they don’t know how to say goodbye or thank you, so you have to help them.
One of my favorites is to create a keepsake together in order to remember the community you enjoyed all year long. These bookmarks serve as a gift to students as well as an activity in and of themselves.
Easing the End of School Year Transition
Instead of letting things dissolve into chaos, what if you tried for meaningful end of school year activities that helped students feel closure over leaving your class? Activities that recap and value your time together, and help students feel confident to leave the community that you have created.
However, it’s tough to find time at the end of the year, when ARDs are every other day and grades are due. I’m excited to recap some of my favorite ways to end the year. My hope is that I can inspire you to stay enthused.
Powerful End of School Year Activities
Literacy Performances: You can choose any length or style of text and students will perform a live action version of the text.
To differentiate for GT students, have them create the script! They can also work on making a set design or a virtual backdrop using Google Slides To scaffold for striving students, give them several days to practice their script.
- Reader’s Theater – Have students choose their favorite text that you read during the year. They can turn it into a script to perform for the class. This works well if you use picture books as mentor texts. See my suggestions on that here.
- You may also assign new skits to different groups and have a final presentation during the last week of school.
- I also offer several reader’s theaters on my TPT store
- Tableaux – If you read a class novel, you can complete a tableaux in which different groups are assigned (or choose) important scenes from the novel. They create a freeze frame scene and then have one narrator read the corresponding text.
- Talk Show – Students can create a talk show to interview the characters from a novel or story they read.
I’ve created free student-friendly directions for both the tableaux and talk show: Click here for a free printable!
Group Text Analysis
- Butcher paper + markers + your favorite Common Lit story + analysis directions = group analysis. (Think plot, theme, figurative language text connections – The options are limitless!)
- Your favorite nonfiction piece, from Newsela, + Nonfiction Quilt Project = deeper level thinking AND student engagement!
Time Capsule Letters to Themselves
- This is my signature move. Students write a letter to their future selves, explaining the details of 6th grade and the lessons that they want to remember. I also allow students to write letters to each other.
- If you have the ability for them to self address an envelope, and hold on to it, it’s super exciting for them to receive it in the mail a year or two later. If not, seal them up and tell the students to keep it hidden for a year or so. Either way, time passing makes the discovery of the envelope more exciting.
Poems
- “There is No Word for Goodbye” by Mary Tallmountain
- “Middle School Boys Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” – Michelle Price
- “Dreams” by Langston Hughes
- “Hope is the Thing With Feathers” Emily Dickinson
- “If I Could Only Stop One Heart From Breaking” Emily Dickinson
- Any of these poems could pair with my poetry analysis kit!
For more high school poetry ideas, read my post on unique poems for high schoolers.
For more middle school poetry ideas read my post on the ten best poems for middle schoolers.
Books
- Oh The Places You’ll Go – Dr. Suess
- Before I Leave – Jessixa Bagley
- The Tiny Seed – Eric Carle
- Where I Live by Eileen Spinelli
- If you have an entire week, this is a great read aloud. If you only have a day or two, I typically bookmark about 10 pages, and give them the general idea of the book. It’s out of print, but look for it second hand. My students love this title.
- The End by David Larochelle
- Hello, Hello by Matthew Cordell
- I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
- Last Day Blues by Julie Dannenberg
Other end of school year reading suggestions available here.
Create a Keepsake
- Elementary teachers tend to do this well, but in secondary, we have so many students, they tend to just walk out the door on the last day of school.
- Ideas:
- Use their writer’s notebook as an autograph book. Allow students to leave each other positive messages or letters in their notebook that they will take home.
- Have students design a book mark ! If you have time, write a short message before laminating them.
- Glue an envelope into their writer’s notebook. Have students write notes to each other and then seal the envelope. They will have a time capsule for later.
- T-shirt – advertise that students can bring a t-shirt for everyone to sign. I typically buy white bandannas for students who can’t or don’t bring a t-shirt.
Comma Rules – Depending on the comma rules that you have learned, students can make sentence strips to give kind encouragement to their teachers.
Examples:
- Mrs Price, my ELA teacher, helped me improve my writing skills. (interrupter/appositive)
- Mrs. Hepburn is helpful, kind, and awesome! (Items in a series)
- Because Mrs. Garcia was so positive, her students were excited to learn. (Subordinating conjunction
Save the Best for Last
Don’t skimp on these final days. Student behavior is going to get out of hand. While we can’t eliminate their behavior choices, we can choose meaningful end of school year activities to put the learning in the student’s hands.
The more you put in their hands, typically the more engaged they will be. Setting a purpose for the activity, like giving it to a friend or teacher, or performing for a larger audience, tends to keep more students engaged for a longer period of time. Engagement is the key to reducing student misbehavior.
Respectful tasks – Activities that show that you believe that they can produce and create on their own, and that you are willing to challenge them.
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