Are you WORN OUT??
Personally, I don’t understand where other teachers find the time and energy to do big elaborate projects at the end of the year. I’ve always got so much paperwork and packing to do that just the thought of organizing a field day or trip or picnic exhausts me! If you’re looking for fun, easy-to-implement stuff to make the end of the year special, try the links below. Then read on for ways to keep your sanity when you’ve still got three chapters to teach, it’s ninety degrees, and everyone just wants to be at the pool!!
Day- or Week- Long Activities
Super Subject Days- devote each day of the last week to one subject area!
Have a reading celebration!
Participate in Teach the Teacher Day!
Do a water station day!
Do a beach mini-unit!
Try some ocean-inspired activities!
Within Grade-Level Rotations: take each other's classes every afternoon for a week
and teach a favorite lesson or activity!
Academics/ Review Activities
Write autobiographies!
Write about it- end of year journal prompts!
Write a letter to next year's class!
Goodnight Moon, Goodbye House... Goodbye Room (comparisons)!
Make "What I Learned" ice cream cones!
Name That Word- FUN vocabulary review!
Assign creative group research projects!
Perform in a "What We Know Math Show!"
Take a nature walk and write poems!
Enjoy your silent reading time outside!
Conduct science investigations with bubbles!
Make kites with acrostics, poems, stories, etc. on them, and go fly a kite!
Fun Stuff
Do a word search with the class' names!
Make class t-shirts!
Make tin can ice cream!
Make signed class frames with photos!
Make "Thumb-body Special" thank-you notes!
"Nice All Around" compliments (using computers)
Paint with bubbles!
Sing special songs!
Make a cool new bulletin board for next year's class!
Have a graduation ceremony!
Give silly or serious End of Year awards! (printable)!
More award ideas
How to keep kids on task when spring fever's in the air
It’s harder for kids to stay focused when they know the end of the year is coming. Try doing more of the following:
-partner and group work (they’ll be talking, anyway!)
-hands-on activities (cutting, gluing, manipulatives)
Don't allow students to get away with behaviors they wouldn't have been allowed to do before. This just adds to an environment of chaos and makes it harder to get the class back on track.
Instead of punishing misbehavior, increase the rewards for correct behavior. Randomly give free time passes or other prizes for students who are following directions and getting their work done. Allow students fifteen minutes at the end of the day to talk, read, or draw with a partner if they stay on task and you are able to get through all of the lessons planned for the day.
Busy work or real learning??
There's always a lot of paperwork and chores that teachers have to do at the end of the year, far more than what can be accomplished in the day or two the school system allows after the kids' last day. Every teacher I know starts the process early. The problem arises when the teacher has things to do but the kids don't. It's tempting to give coloring sheets or other non-academic work, but we all have a lot of curriculum to cover, and it's really not fair to the kids to waste their time with busy work.
To keep the kids engaged in worthwhile learning activties, I give several work packets during the last few weeks. I created a 10 page packet in which they research the effects of school uniforms, survey for opinions, graph results, argue pro and cons, make decision trees, caluculate the costs, identify fact vs. opinion, and so on, culminating in a letter to the PTA arguing for or against a uniform policy for the following school year. This packet takes the better part of a week to complete and the students love it. I have a similar packet for a PETA newspaper for kids about animal rights, and one from the school system about county history. While the kids work, I do the tasks they can't help with and periodically circulate throughout the room to make sure they know what they're doing and are on task. On the very last day, they complete this End-of-Year packet from Enchanted Learning, which is a follow up to a similar booklet from the same site that they do at the beginning of the year.
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Preparing in advance
A month before school ends:
-List the big organizational jobs that need to be done, and assign them to specific weeks. For example, during an planning or down time during the second week of May, you could clean out the file cabinet, during the third week, clean out the storage closet or containers, fourth week reorganize centers and manipulatives and clean out posters, etc.
-Decide on any special end-of-year activities you would like to do (see the links above for ideas). Notify parents, get administrative permission, and collect materials and supplies.
-Catch up on any organizational tasks you've been meaning to get around to, such as filing. Try to get your room as clutter-free as possible so you have less to pack and/or put away when school lets out.
Two weeks before school ends:
-Begin filling out any end-of-year paperwork you need to complete.
-Complete special end-of-year activities planned. IMPORTANT: Do NOT plan an open house, picnic, trip, or any other big event for the last week of school! You will be too frazzled, the kids too hyper, and the room will be a wreck because you're in the process of deconstructing it. Do the elaborate stuff early and the more low-key stuff at the end.
-Add additional awards and incentives for good behavior. I allow my students an extra ten minutes of recess at the end of the day if the entire class completes all of their classwork within the time allotted.
-Return borrowed materials to their owners. (Videos, books, teacher resources, staplers, etc.)
-Be sure not to fall behind on your grading. The last thing you want when report cards are due is a huge stack of ungraded papers you've never gotten around to.
-Inventory any materials you are required to submit a list of.
-Complete any paperwork for your students' placement next year (retention lists and letters, placement cards, etc.).
One week before school ends:
-Slowly begin collecting textbooks and filling out any associated paperwork.
-Finish grading all papers and average student grades for the quarter and year.
-Complete report cards.
-Fill out award certificates if your school does honor roll assemblies.
-Put together students' cumulative records and files.
-I would not recommend taking down bulletin boards this soon, as tempting as it is. With the kids' help, that job should take less than two hours and should be done as late as possible. Once the room looks bare, it's nearly impossible to get kids to want to work.
Second-to-last day of school:
-List all of the kid-friendly tasks that need to be done, breaking them down into very small, specific jobs (see below). Examples include taking down bulletin board borders, posters, bulletin board paper, student work, scrubbing desk tops, etc. On the second-to-last day of school pair students up, more responsible students partnered with less responsible students. Give a lengthy partner activity to complete, such as a fun skills review work packet. Assign a job to each pair of students, and call two or three pairs at once to complete their jobs. If you call too many at one time, it will be too chaotic- most kids should be sitting down doing their written work, and if they are playing around, they will not get to do their jobs. Your main duty during this time is to supervise and facilitate. My class of third graders de-constructed the entire classroom in under two hours last year using this method.
-Label all furniture with your name and room number so it does not "disappear" over the summer.
-Begin having administration, grade level chairs, specialists, etc. sign off on any inventories you are required to submit.
-Send home all student papers and materials except their school supply boxes. This way, if you forget anything, you can always send it home on the last day of school. This also keeps kids from being too weighed down with stuff on the last day.
Last day of school:
-Have students completely clean out their desks and scrub them down with sponges and soapy water. I have found it best not to have all students do this at the same time- assign a fun worksheet or activity for them to do while they wait their turns. Gather three or four buckets and sponges and demonstrate what to do- and not to do- and what a clean desk looks like. Then call on a volunteer to model and have the class run a commentary and critique on what the child is doing. They should take turns with the buckets and sponges, three or four kids at a time, and they can lose the privelege of cleaning if they are playing or making a mess. All desk contents should go into their backpacks. You can ask for class donations if you want- lots of my kids donate their glue, rulers, etc. to the classroom communal supply for next year's class, since they will all want new supplies for the fall, anyway.
-Students can do math problems or handwriting practice in shaving cream on their desks- this gets the top squeaky clean and is lots of fun.
-Clean shelves, sinks, boards, etc. The students can do the majority of this for you using damp paper towels.
-Have students do a fun End-of-Year packet like this one or this one while you wrap up last minute tasks.
-Play games and enjoy the kids! This is the last time you'll all be together. By the afternoon, you should have everything, or most things, done, anyway, so relax and spend time talking and playing together. We played Four Corners last year and I joined in at the last minute. We had a blast and I wondered to myself, why didn't I do this earlier??
Teacher Work Days:
-Use any days you are given after the students' last day to finish cleaning and organizing.
-Always pack up and put away the contents of your desk LAST. You will be searching for pens, paperclips, and the stapler right up until you walk out the door, so there's no point in trying to put those items away early.
-Complete all cumulative folders, inventories, and other paperwork.
-turn in your gradebook and attendance, if required.
-Consider planning with your grade-level team for next year. We like to go over the school supply list, behavior modification plan, and recess rules before school lets out. Other teachers would rather do these things in the fall, especially if they know there will be staff turnover.
-Do any other planning you want to do for the following school year.
Suggestions for how students can help deconstruct the room in an orderly, structured way
Kids love to help. Unfortunately, sometimes it's more work to train and supervise them than it is to do it all yourself! Here are some jobs that I have had students successfully complete in the past:
taking down bulletin board borders
taking down posters
taking down bulletin board paper
taking down student work
collecting and trashing staples from bulletin boards
putting away chart strips
setting up the calendar for next August
taking down the word wall
taking down the door display
packing books up
recording textbook numbers and stacking them on shelves
cleaning chalkboards
wiping down shelves, windowsills, cabinets, etc.
labeling everything with masking tape marked with teacher's name
returning materials to the library, science lab, etc.
My suggestion is that they complete these tasks on the second to last day of school. Any sooner and it wil be very difficult to do work because the room sceams, "School's out!". Use the tips above for the second-to-last day of school for an orderly way to get these things done. I don't allow my kids to ask if there's anything I want them to do because they'll drive me crazy! Instead I just call them in pairs, rotating back through the pairs again until I run out of jobs.
A final thought: why not prepare for next year?
If you're staying in the same school and grade, consider making photocopies and laminating for the following school year now. It seems like the copier and laminator always break in the fall when everyone has a ton of stuff to put together! You can laminate blank nametags, folders, etc., as well as photocopy get-to-know you papers and August worksheets to save you time in the fall. I did this for the first time last year, and it was such a joy to come back in the fall and spend time on my classroom instead of standing over a copier!
I had my kids go through all my children's books this year. I took all of the books out of the bins and stacked them on the floor. Two helpers then sorted them into piles: books that need stickers (that indicate genre and reading level) and books that don't. Another helper then took the books that didn't need stickers and checked to make sure that my name was stamped inside, again sorting the books by whether they needed that label or not. You can see the girls in the first picture doing that. In the second picture, you can see what it looked like once they had sorted all the books. The bins have books that I bought this school year and never got around to stamping (too many of them! Shame on me!). The large papers you see on the floor tell the kids what each pile of books is so they don't get mixed up. In the last picture, you can see my four helpers sitting around the wipe-offboard. Each had their own area sectioned off with instructions. The first stamped the book, handed it to the second, who waved the book around gently and let it air dry, then passed it to the third, who hand-wrote my name in (the stamp just says 'This Book Belongs To"), and then passed it to the fourth, who checked it for rips, bends, and missing pages. If the book was fine, it got placed over by the empty book containers for other helpers to put away by genre later. If it needed repairs, it would go in the pile that needed stickers. I went through that stack of books myself. When all books were in good condition, leveled, labeled with my name, and sorted by genre, a few more helpers wrote down the author's name and title of every book I own on 5x8 index cards. Each index card was for a seperate genre. (Another teacher I know had a fifth-grade student come in and type hers for her during his recess time, which he loved!). This process took about three days and a lot of supervision from me, but since each child helped out for less than a half and hour, it really didn't take away from their learning time, and gave them something challenging and special to do during the last few days of school.
FUN ideas from Education World
Last day activities from The Teacher's Corner
June lessons from The Teacher's Guide
End-Of-Year reflection ideas from Scholastic
Teaching Heart End of Year page
