End of the School Year Activities

Happy June! You made it! This has been quite the year, so now it is time to celebrate everything you all have accomplished together and have some fun! I have a number of different traditions or fun activities that I love for the end of the school year. We wrote a post a few years back with some of our favorites, but I have even more ideas that are listed below.

• Write a poem for your class! We had an introduction and conclusion stanza or two as well as two lines for each student. We definitely took liberties with the rhyming, but it’s something students really love and appreciate. We’ve heard about the poem as a fond memory or something students have held on to years after (we also gave each student a copy to take home).

• A photo slideshow is always fun and appreciated! It’s been harder with COVID, masking, being in two separate groups, etc, but I’ve learned that whatever photos you share, it’s more about the memories. I do make sure I have a photo of every student and as many adults from the building as possible so no one feels left out, but that’s usually not too difficult for me as I try to take photos all year. You can use different free online programs for slideshows or Iphoto or Google Drive/Slides.

• Tie dye! Last year, my school had t-shirts made to commemorate the uber challenging year we had all been through, so we tie dyed those shirts. We ordered a kit online and were able to do it all outside, although we had to rearrange our schedule a bit with the Music teacher so we could have multiple adults with the students in smaller groups. I’ve also tie dyed in the classroom with just 2-3 students at a time over an entire afternoon while other students worked on something else. It definitely helps to have a sink, but it’s not essential! You can ask students to bring in a t shirt from home and order some backups or even tie dye socks, headbands, scarves, or anything really. Last year, since we didn’t need students to bring in shirts from home, we were able to make it a surprise, and it was so exciting for our students (as you can see from the screenshot above).

• Ask for students' feedback! We wrote about this before here and here, if you’d like to see more details or comments from actual students. We’ve found that creating a Google form or something similar and allowing students to submit their feedback online really feels official and private for students. Some don’t write a lot, while others choose to share all of their opinions and thoughts. If nothing else, it’s great modeling of being reflective and caring about their opinions and voices.

• Have a class “auction” or giveaway for things around the classroom. You’d be amazed at how excited students get about “winning” charts from the year or other equally mundane objects! It is fun and it helps you start clearing your walls. I usually just do a raffle and pick names for each object. Students can pass and have their name go back in the jar or take an object and then later do a trade. It’s fun and brings out a lot of memories from the year about different activities, projects, and more.

• Make memory books and/or provide time to sign yearbooks (if your school has them and they are accessible for everyone). My school, being an independent school, gives every student a yearbook. However, I still find making memory books a fun time to reflect on growth and fond memories. You can find various templates online (example here) or make your own that is tailored to your class! It always amazes me what students list as their favorite memories and it is fun to see what they write about their teachers. It’s also a great way to take stock of the year and remember that we all had our ups and downs.

• Take photos! This one really is as simple as it sounds - make sure to take photos of all of these joyful moments! I like to get some more whole class shots and candid ones of the students having fun. You can add them to the photo slideshow or even print some out for students. I’ve also made a private folder online that can be shared with parents in the past.

• Write notes for students: my co-teacher from the last three years started this tradition of writing notes for each student. We put a photo of the student from this year on the note as well, and we both write something about their year in our class. We’ve also given program assistants the opportunity to add their notes as well. We usually give these to students on the last day of school as a parting gift. I’ve done something similar with bookmarks in the past.

• Thank adults in the building who are often forgotten by families! This one is really important during the entire school year. Many of the people who are indispensable, keep us safe, take care of us, and keep the school running are often forgotten in the flurry of end of year thank yous. We always write notes to the people who clean up our room, take care of our building, take care of our health, and keep our school running. Make sure you know how to spell everyone’s name and how they prefer to be addressed. I often put up a photo gallery with names underneath to make sure students can make the name and face connection and spell names correctly.

• Fun projects:  Math, geography, reading, free write, and more! If you have time (we never do, but sometimes manage to squeeze something in) and freedom over your curriculum, try out an end of year project! Students love reflecting on the year and getting more time to independently study or learn about something they enjoyed. I’ve done these in many different ways and every classroom is different, but two things that really help set projects up for success are clear parameters and a sharing component. You can see the checklist for the Math project we did last year above as an example. CHIPS stands for capitalization, homophones, impressive effort, punctuation, and spelling.

• Savor your growth and how far you have come! If you wrote letters to yourselves or made new year’s resolutions or set any goals, now is a great time to revisit them and see how you surprised yourself and maybe even surpassed some goals. Make sure you do this for yourself as well, with or without your student. This was a tough year and you made it!

• Write letters to next year’s class of ___ graders/English students/etc. The advice will be hilarious and heartfelt.

• If you have some students who are anxious about the transition to a new grade or teacher (and you probably do), try to arrange some kind of meet and greet or tour of their future classroom if possible.

Congratulations teachers, it is almost summer! You did it!

Subscribe to our blog:

Looking Back to Look Forward

As the beginning of the new school year approaches (or Teachers’ New Year, as I like to call it), memories and reflections from last year always pop up as we decide what we want to keep, adapt, and get rid of as we start anew. This year, Gabby and I are moving from teaching 5th grade to teaching 3rd grade, so the calculation is even more complex.

The first way we close the year is by literally closing a book. We also finished our class read aloud, Walk Two Moons, on the very last day of school, which felt perfect - Walk Two Moons (if you haven’t read it, RUN and pick it up!) has a complex, multi-faceted ending with lots of emotions, just like the end of the school year. It also reminded me for the umpteenth time how much I love read alouds and how they are an essential teaching and learning tool, but also wonderful for community building because we all grow to care about the characters and wonder what will happen next together. In fifth grade, read aloud is a fun and touching reminder of how young our students are - when they are listening intently and their eyes widen at a cliff-hanger, they forget about being “cool” and almost in middle school and are children again. Multiple students asked for reassurance that we would finish the read aloud before the year ended - even students who tried really hard throughout the year to make it known that they, “don’t like to read.”

Our literal ‘looking’ back together with our class is a photo slideshow. The slideshow we make is comprised of group photos, exciting things we experienced together like field trips, funny moments, photos with visitors, and proud moments (publishing parties, sharing our Social Studies projects, etc). I used kizoa to set it up and the students love the special effects and soundtrack, but really any photo slideshow recapping the year would probably have the desired effect. Students excitedly comment on photos, remember projects they loved (and were challenged by), and laugh at the silly group photos. Thinking back on our students’ reactions, I am reminded how community building in the classroom is so important and is an essential first step of back to school life.

And we end the reflective time together with a class poem that Gabby and I write for them. Each stanza is about one student and has memories, inside jokes, and champions their growth over the school year. We read it together and take turns (we like to think this is very dramatic!) and each year we find it is our best way of sincerely sharing our love for them and sending each student off with our best wishes. This past year, after we read the poem we wrote, we gave the students a break to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. One student came back to report that two other students were in the bathroom crying because the poem made them feel so emotional. I went to check on them, and they hugged me and said this year was amazing and the poem reminded them of everything wonderful about it.

My favorite part of the poem (apart from the slightly ridiculous rhymes we manage to pull off) is watching students react to it. When they hear their name and personalized stanza, they look amazed (and very young all over again). It is such a satisfying culmination of our time together. In third grade, we will definitely have to keep up this tradition! We also will have to continue to focus on goal setting and reflecting on our learning, as we often reference something students have learned or worked on in their personalized stanza. The specificity of the way we name their actions and hard work really resonates with students and makes it clear how much we honor their efforts.

We are entering another school year after a summer which has been eventful and frequently painful for many. We are gearing up for the lessons on skills, but also the necessary tough conversations. And looking back, we’re reminded that think these touchstones that closed our community with full hearts last year, will probably (most definitely) transfer to being important things we bring to 3rd grade!

As we look forward, we will take with us the excitement of shared community stories, the wonderful fun of documenting and focusing on the process (NOT the product) of the year, and the importance of telling our students that we hear them, we see them, and we care for them.

Subscribe to our blog: