"What is always on your end of year list?" A quick 10 always on there items from us.

We were asked what is always on our end of year to do list.. Below are a few pieces we always have on that list. Ironically, for me the end of the year has so many of its own mini lists and rituals. 

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A few things that are always on there for me are: 

1. Write thank you notes (this includes personal ones I write, and also putting aside class time and guiding the students to reflect and write their own. These include notes to students, ridiculously reliable, wonderful maintenance staff, an amazing receptionist, a family that has been really kind, a colleague/peer that helped you out, a class of students you used to have that is graduating etc..) 

2. Log that all our classroom books have been returned! Have students help out, remind families etc. 

3. Set aside class time to solicit student feedback. We wrote blog posts about how and why we do this in 2017 and 2018. End of year feedback from students (post from 2017), Always Ask for Student Feedback! (post from 2018). Our work of teaching and learning is grounded in reflection, this is so important! 

4. Take pictures / make a slideshow/ do some sort of comparison from beginning of the year end of the year. This can be photos from then and now, opening the letters we wrote to ourselves in September, or comparing work from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. 

5. Assign a lot of student helpers to take things down/ clean! 

6. Play more games/ plan for fun moments together, this is the last time this learning community will be together in exactly this way and time will fly and the year will be over. We love making a point to just enjoy each other as the year winds down. 

7. Prepare summer reading lists  (we also wrote a blog post on this, Setting Students Up for Summer Reading) --  foster continuous reading excitement (and let them enjoy giving you and one another recs!), and set them up for success to have books they know they want to get at the library or the bookstore. (We have tons of posts on books we love, here is the most recent one about books we extra loved for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

8. Finish that all class read aloud! We wrote about how we wrap that up in an older post (Looking Back to Look Forward). 

9. Reflect- use that student feedback, consider the pieces that worked and haven't worked, and congratulate yourself. There is always more we could do or a piece that could have gone better or a student we wish we reached or supported better. Make note and also celebrate another great year of fostering forever learners! 

10. Plan an end of school meal that you're excited about (for me, it's usually an Ethiopian dish.. or sushi! I just got hungry writing that). We both just love food so.. yep! 

This piece was also published on Medium through McGraw Hill’s The Art of Teaching Project!

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