Every teacher usually has an End of the School Year Box of Tricks! If you don’t have one yet, you better start one because you will definitely need it!
The end of the school year can be riddled with programs, assemblies, field days, celebrations and a list of other activities that always happen at the end of the school year. These hectic schedules can leave some of your days heavily segmented and broken into little chunks of time inside your classroom.
Here are a few tips and tricks to add to your End of the School Year Box of Tricks that can help you and your students remain productive and actively engaged during those crazy end of year schedules.
Read Aloud is ALWAYS a good idea!
Sometimes during those crazy schedule days, you have breaks of about 20-30 minutes in the classroom before you are off to another end of year campus activity. Read Aloud can always fill those little time slots.
At the end of the school year, I like to read When Lightening Comes in a Jar by Patricia Polacco. It just signifies summer vacation to me, so I like to share it with students.
Also, at the end of the school year, I like to gather up the read aloud titles that were student favorites throughout the school year. We would keep them in a basket near the shared area and have some “Stop everything and READ ALOUD” moments.
Throughout the final weeks of the year, we would gather together at random moments during the school day and choose one the class favorites from the basket to reread and relive the classroom memories of the book.
Word Work is ALWAYS fun!
By the end of the school year, there are many high frequency words on the Word Wall.
It’s always fun to play a game of Wordo to fill in a little time! But more importantly, it’s great practice for those high frequency words before students leave for summer break. Wordo is just like playing Bingo but with word wall words. Read more about how to
play in this post, 4 Word Wall Activities Students Can Do Every Week. There is also a FREE WORDO grid DOWNLOAD at the end so make sure to keep reading until the end.
Another quick Word Wall activity for review is “Be A Mind Reader”! The teacher gives a set of clues (one clue at a time) about a word on the Word Wall. With each clue students are scanning the words on the wall to figure out which word is the mystery word. The students are trying to “read your mind” to figure out the word. All students need is a little piece of paper or small dry erase board to play.
Read more about how to play in this blog post, 4 Word Wall Activities Students Can Do Every Week.
What other activities do you have in your End of the School Year Box of Tricks?
Until next time...
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