• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts

The Educators Room logo

  • Start Here
    • Impact Statements: Teacher Expertise
    • Newsletter
  • Browse Topics
    • Content Strategies
      • Literacy
      • Mathematics
      • Social Studies
      • Educational Technology
      • ELL & ESOL
      • Fine Arts
      • Special Education
      • Popular Topics
        • Teacher Self-Care
        • Instructional Coach Files
        • Common Core
        • The Traveling Teacher
        • The Unemployed Teacher
        • The New Teacher Chronicles
        • Book Review
        • Grade Levels
          • Elementary (K-5)
          • Middle (6-8)
          • Adult
          • New Teacher Bootcamp
          • Hot Button Topics
            • Menu Item
              • Principals' Corner
              • Charter Schools
              • Confessions of a Teacher
              • Interviews
              • The State of Education
              • Stellar Educator of the Week
            • Menu
              • How to Fix Education
              • Featured
              • Ask a Teacher
              • Teacher Branding
              • Current Events
  • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout- An 8 Week Course
    • Becoming An Educational Consultant
    • Teacher Branding 101:Teachers are The Experts
    • The Learning Academy
    • Books
    • Shirts
  • Education in Atlanta
  • Teacher Self-Care
  • The Coach's Academy
menu icon
go to homepage
subscribe
search icon
Homepage link
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts
×

May 21, 2013 Current Events in Education

The Final Countdown! Activities for the Last Days of School

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Lori H Rice

Lori Rice is a fourth-grade teacher at West Elementary in Wamego, Kansas, who has taught K-2 reading as well as kindergarten, first grade and fourth grade since 1996. She has a passion for creativity, learning, questioning and the whole child. Her classroom is a place of acceptance and celebrating differences.
  • Bringing Project Based Learning to our Classroom - August 12, 2018
  • Keep the Engagement Alive: Start the Year with Purpose - August 5, 2018
  • It's Our Fault: A Teacher's Confession - March 18, 2018
  • Keeping Your Teaching Real: A Teacher's Role - March 11, 2018
  • Sketch Notes in the Elementary Classroom - February 15, 2017
  • Teach From the Heart - February 9, 2017
  • Who is the Teacher: School or Family? - January 11, 2017
  • Dear President Elect Trump, From Your Teachers - November 17, 2016
  • Let them Be Children - October 21, 2016
  • Print Resources: Great Tools for Kids - October 17, 2016

EndOfSchoolMay always comes in with a gust and flies by.  I scramble to reflect on the year, cram in last-minute curriculum, organize parents and lunches for field trips & play day, wrap my head around the data that must be collected, input data into spreadsheets, finalize grades & collect back work to finalize grades, make thank you gifts or cards for my room parents, complete my classroom inventory, and all the while I am teaching.  Along with the crazy end of the year shuffle also comes spring weather, the start of baseball practices, later evenings, and students who are just as excited about summer as I am.  This creates a challenge for teachers.  How do you find meaningful activities to keep students engaged until the end of the year?

Digital Yearbook

Have students brainstorm a list of the topics, projects, units and activities that you have done throughout the year in class.  It is helpful to organize these by month.  If your students keep a daily agenda or you have a classroom blog or calendar those are good reminders and helpful guides.  Next, select one or two items from the list and write paragraphs telling them.  This is a good time to remind students about word choice and sentence fluency. When the paragraphs are completed, have students type these into PowerPoint.  You can have each student create their own version or you can compile them into a class project. Add classroom photos from the year.  These can be pulled from your blog or added from your classroom resource.  Finally, email these to families so students have a digital yearbook of their classroom experiences.  These are also great for last day presentations.

Future Self

Talk about the topics and big ideas you covered during the year.  Have students think about what they want to do when they grow up.  Challenge them to think of something you learned this year that sparks a career interest.  Next, have students to brainstorm a list of possibilities and then select one career from the list they think they may want to do when they grow up. Ask students to answer these questions about their future career:

  1. What can you do this summer that is related to your career?
  2. What tools will you use in your career?
  3. What schooling will you need for your career?
  4. Who do you know that has this career now?
  5. What did you learn this year that will help you with this career?

Use a cube template or cut 4X4 squares of construction paper for students to tape together.  Each student will need 6 squares to organize into a cube net.  On each square write or draw pictures to answer the questions from above leaving one square for their name and career choice.  Tape or glue these together when they are complete.  If you have an old empty frame, have each student write their future career on a strip of paper.  Tape it to the edge of the frame and take a picture of each student holding the frame so their face appears in the middle.

Playground Math

This one is open-ended.  Take chalk outside and have students work math problems on the cement or playground.  Practice math facts and create number lines.  Place decimals, fractions, and whole numbers along the lines.  Give them anything they can do inside on a piece of notebook paper--just do it outside!

Relay Race

Think about tasks or steps you can break down.  Take students outside and divide them into groups.  Set a whiteboard and maker station for each group.  Give the group a challenge.  They must complete all of the work on the board one member at a time.  For example, provide a multiple step story problem for each group to read together.  The first person must run down and complete the first part of the problem.  They then return and another member runs down to complete the second part.  They continue until they have an answer and label.  For language, give students a topic and they must write a group story or poem.  The first person runs down and write the first sentence or line.  The second person runs down to complete the second and so on.  Teaching science, give them a diagram challenge.  Each player must draw or label part of a diagram.  Anything that can be broken into steps or parts can be used for a relay race.

The end of the year is always a delicate balance between having fun, reflecting on the year, and keeping things under control while continuing to learn.  Next week we will have our last week of school.  I plan to keep my kids busy thinking and learning with these activities.  What are you going to do?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

High School Recess: Should it be an Option? Teaching About Christopher Columbus and the Truth of History 6 Tips on Teaching Social Studies in a Politically-Charged Era The Importance of Communication For IEP Students and Parents
« How do Effective Teachers Create a Classroom of Inquiry? - A Book Review
Sensitive Teachers & the Benefit of the Doubt (Charter School Diaries #18) »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

The Educator's Room was launched in 2012 to amplify the voice of educators. To date, we have over 45+ writers from around the world and boast over twelve million page views. Through articles, events, and social media we will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about how to improve public education. This mission is especially important when reporting on education in our community; therefore, we commit our readers to integrity, accuracy, and independence in education reporting. To join our mailing list, click here.

What we do

At The Educator's Room, we focus on amplifying and honoring the voice of educators as experts in education. To date, we have over 40 staff writers/teachers from around the world.

Popular Posts

  • "Let's Make This Happen": Following Student Interests to Interest-Based Mentorships
  • Want to Keep Special Education Teachers? Try Mentorship
  • An Idaho teen who won his school board election has a message for educators
  • Moving Beyond Diversity to Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging: Lessons from a Sunday Sermon

Featured On

Buy Our Books/Courses

How to Leave Your Job in Education

Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout

Using Your Teacher Expertise to Become an Educational Consultant

Check out our books on teaching and learning!

The Learning Academy

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility Policy

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Services
  • Media Kit
  • FAQ

 

Copyright © 2021 The Educator's Room.