The end of the year is once again upon us! How does this happen? Every year it arrives very fast after Spring Break.
Many teacher bloggers have taken the time to share their thoughts on how to make the end of the year more manageable for teachers and special for students. This week we are discussing special end of the year activities that we LOVE teaching at this time of year.
This four-part series will discuss:
Do you have any special activities planned for your students?
I teach Grade 8 so the last month is very busy with a year end trip, a graduation celebration and a Grade 7 vs 8 whole day soccer tournament. For my homeroom class, I would like to create a Word Cloud (Wordle or Tagxedo) for each student made up from adjectives their classmates would use to describe them. Kristy from https://www.2peasandadog.com
I give my students a little gift each year – a magnet with an inspirational quote on it. I have a selection of quotes and I choose each one specifically for each student. They love knowing that I actually picked a special quote for them and most of them come to see me privately at some point during the last few days to find out why I chose the quote I chose for them. Meghan from http://www.funfreshideas.com
I plan a “Finish Strong” BINGO where students who are on target will be able to earn tickets to place on my over-sized BINGO board in any open spot. On the last day of school, I have a big drawing with prizes that are inside brown paper lunch bags. When a student’s spot is called, they can pick any bag. It’s fun to see what each person gets and I try to include many summer items as a nice “send off”. Lisa from http://mrsspanglerinthemiddle.com
My AP students will have a pizza party and then will get to create videos for future students about being in an AP class. Tara from www.scienceinthecityclassroom.com
When the weather is warm, I like to take my students outside into our school courtyard for Silent Sustained Reading. Kim from http://ocbeachteacher.blogspot.com/
At the end of the year, I always incorporate projects, speeches, discussions, station activities, and games…anything to get students involved, moving, and in charge of their own learning. Melissa from http://www.readingandwritinghaven.com/
I like having students spend time outside measuring slope with sidewalk chalk graphs Randi from http://www.4theloveofmath.com