The days are long and the years are short! The first part is absolutely applicable whether you’re a parent – where this saying seems most often used – or a teacher. And this applies even more so with the final days of the school year. But we’re here to help with 12 end of year activities to help with these long days!
I’ve teamed up with a group of 11 other fantastic educators to share easy and engaging end of year activities to help you successfully finish the year in your ELA classes.
Define your year in songs
Throughout the year, music plays a significant part in lessons or as background in my classes so it’s only fitting that it figures into the end of year activities too. Compiling a playlist of 5-10 songs to reflect on the year either personally or academically works for students and teachers alike as one of your end of year activities.
Academic version: Choose songs to reflect the big ideas, essential questions, or texts studied.
This is a good review option to close out the course or prepare for a year-end exam. Plus, it has a two-fold bonus! First, it provides feedback about where students connected with course material – it’s an informal course feedback form for teachers. Second, it provides songs to use as connection pieces for next year should your course remain similar; think about using the songs for reflective writing, to connect to a text, or as a text to use for skills practice – inferencing, exploring figurative language, and more!
Personal version: Choose songs tied to meaningful moments in your year.
This can become a memory keepsake for students about their year that was. They say the music we listen to in our teens and early-20s is the music that will stick with us most into our later years (I can personally attest to this… can you too?). So this activity might reinforce that memory for students. You could have them schedule an email to their future selves using www.futureme.org with the songs and rationales or create a class playlist on Spotify or YouTube to share with the group.
A music playlist can bring more joy into the classroom to wrap up another difficult year. Students can share and compare lists with classmates and have some discussion to see where there are similarities and differences or students can share their ‘best’ song from their list (assuming classroom approved lyrics!) with the class and have it become a bit of an ELA dance party!
To make life easier, here’s the lesson set-up for you.
Plan a literary field trip
The end of the year can really feel like it’s dragging on. Everyone is tired, burned out, and in need of some serious sunshine. Samantha from Samantha in Secondary likes to capitalize on that wanderlust by having students plan a literary field trip.
First, students brainstorm all of the texts they’ve read over the course of the year. This kind of project works best with a nonfiction text or any novel that’s rooted in a real place. (Think “The Crucible”, To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Great Gatsby.) This can work for short stories as well. Once you have a list brainstormed, think of all the texts that would meet this criterion.
After your students choose a specific text, the next step is to research all of the different places they could pick. Usually giving them a requirement of 3 locations works best. For a text like “The Crucible”, students have plenty to choose from set in or around Salem, Massachusetts. You can even allow them to include things like museums (John Proctor Museum), important cultural or historical sites (Giles Corey’s grave), and then have them research things to see, do, and eat. (Because what’s a trip without some great food?)
If you’re looking for a great done-for-you resource that walks students through this project full of thorough instructions and attractive templates. There is even a rubric included to make grading a cinch. Click here to check it out.
Happy travels!
Create student-centered podcasts
Picture this: It’s May and students are ready to stop listening to their teachers and teachers are exhausted from pulling out all the tricks to keep kids engaged. Not too hard to imagine, right??
Krista from @whimsyandrigor knows this feeling all too well. In fact, she is feeling it right this very instant.
So, what’s the solution to help both students and teachers? Podcasting!
Why are student-created podcasts the answer?
- Choice! Students get to choose the topic they will cover. It could be a pod all about book reviews or the latest in gaming or ideas for summer vacation. Literally anything!
- It’s creative! Students have full creative control not only in their subject but also in their cover art, sound effects, and musical choices.
- Student-led! Let Krista do all the teaching for you by using the videos she created for her students. By watching this series or instructional videos, her middle school students created their very own podcasts! ON THEIR OWN!!!
If you haven’t checked out the incredible podcast-creating tool that is Soundtrap, try it now!
If you are feeling intimidated – let that go and dive into this sure-to-captivate project. Remember, Krista has you covered with literally everything you need-from defining a podcast, brainstorming ideas, recording the audio, and scoring their final project!
Let’s end the school year with engagement high, creativity soaring, and frustrations dwindling!
Learn filmmaking 101
Lights, camera, ACTION!
Who doesn’t love a great movie or television show?
Students stream movies daily, but they really don’t know what happens behind the scenes. This activity is an excellent way to learn the basics of filmmaking. Sharena from The Humble Bird Teacher has her students complete different end of year activities include a film project! Her students enjoy working as a film crew to create a 20-second anti-bullying commercial.
Before creating the commercial, they learn all about the different film positions such as screenwriter, director, casting director, actor/actress, costume designer, and film editor. Once they do research, they complete a mini-lesson on the crew position they selected. Then it is time for the final product, a commercial! It is a great way to end the school year.
At the end of it all, Sharena has a movie premiere day with popcorn and commercial screenings! For more information on this activity, click here.
Share creative book recommendations
Who better to recommend books to students than students? After a year of sharing books and encouraging students to read, Carolyn from Middle School Café likes to have her students make recommendations to her new group of students as one of her end of year activities.
When students share about books they love, their peers are more likely to take an interest in the book. Here are 4 ways to have your students recommend book:
Bookshelf Overhang – Similar to what you might see at the book store, bookshelf reviews are perfect for your classroom library. Students write book recommendations you can display with your books throughout the following school year.
In Book Review – Another way to build curiosity for books is by having students write book reviews that are left inside the book. As students browse the books, they will find a note within the book telling them why they should read the book.
The Best Book I Ever Read – This type of book review makes for a usable, interactive bulletin board.
Book Review Notebook – Create a Recommended Book notebook in your classroom library. Students fill out a more traditional book review. Place the reviews in a notebook and keep the notebook accessible to students. When students are looking for recommendations, they can read through what their peers have said – this is a great place to send students to find their next book. Students love coming back year after year to see if their review is still in the book!
Book recommendations are a great activity for the end of the year that serves to fill those last days of school and helps you prepare for next year!
Here are 7 done for you book recommendation templates ready to print and go!
Throw a book-commercial party
Independent reading is at the heart of everything Olivia’s students learn in her literature class, so the end of the year is a perfect time for students to shout-out their favorite books of the semester. Here’s how to throw a book-commercial party in your classroom this month for one of your end of year activities:
First, give your students time to evaluate which books they enjoyed reading this year and which ones they definitely wouldn’t recommend. When they have determined their favorite book, have them brainstorm ways to “advertise” their books to their classmates. (If you studied ethos, logos, and pathos earlier in the year, this is a great time to review!) Next, you can either give students time to record video commercials for their books, or you can opt for live presentations instead. Olivia prefers to have her students record their videos because it makes presentation day much less stressful. Students can bring popcorn or candy and have a commercial-watching party that doubles as book exposure for the whole class.
Design a comic strip
Who doesn’t love comic strips? Whether you get them in four panels off Twitter or in a witty political cartoon in your local newspaper, comic strips can be an amazing source of both art and commentary on the world all rolled into one. This is why Yaddy from Yaddy’s Room loves to incorporate comic strips into her end of year reflection activities for high school English.
Teachers can start off by showing students a few of their favorite comic strips, whether they make comments on a tough point in their life, like witnessing a tragic event like 9/11 unfold, or a cheesy one on some of the pain points of aging.
Then, teachers can guide students through picking a moment of triumph or growth that they went through in the year and translating it into a comic strip!
Yaddy likes to give students a few links to articles and videos on what makes a good comic strip, you can find those links here to help guide students through the process.
Overall, students are going to be challenged to utilize what they learned throughout the year about storytelling and concise writing in this comic strip and have fun creating it as well.
Countdown with last lines
Endings are unique to our area of instruction. Some might argue that is the ending of a story that can either make or break a book. How many of us loved a story, only to be disappointed by the way it ended? From cliffhangers to marriages, dramatic sword fights to mysterious disappearances, the stories we’ve studied all year long all came to an end in one way or another.
AND SO WILL THE SCHOOL YEAR!
Believe it or not, Amanda from Mud and Ink Teaching has found the perfect way to sneak in just a little bit extra literary discussion into your end of the year countdown celebration: analyzing famous last lines in literature and film!
When 20 (school) days in the year remain, start counting down by creating a paper chain. Each day, look at a famous last line from literature or film, discuss the type of ending that the author used, and the details and imagery within.
As we look at each of these mentor sentences, we keep track of what we notice, and, by the end of the year, students write their own “last line” for the school year. This countdown will keep students engaged AND eagerly looking forward to the end of the school year with these end of year activities.
Gamify a current events timeline
For some reason, the last few weeks of school feel all of 5,436 days long, and getting the students to do just about anything is like pulling teeth from a mile away. They’re dragging, we’re dragging; it’s a drag no matter how you slice it. To remedy this, Ana from Simply Ana P recommends gamifying things as much as possible and throwing in “random” end of year activities just for fun.
Ana has found that even in May, kids will still be down for competition – and if you throw in some candy, well, it’s a win/win. One competitive activity that Ana has used the past several years is an end-of-the-year timeline scramble.
The beauty of this activity is that students get to review current events that occurred during the school year while working together and thinking a little critically. To put this activity together, Ana compiles a mix of sports, political, nature-based, and pop culture events that made headlines during the year. Then, she scrambles the events in text boxes on Google Slides, and students have to organize them in chronological order, drag-and-drop style.
Ana recommends going over light internet research skills, reminding students that the first website they see might not always be the most accurate (just as they should remember when composing research papers).
Let your kids work in duos or trios, up the ante with some jolly ranchers or chocolates, and sit back/relax as you watch them vigorously attack this educational competition for what can be an entire class period. Adding individual written reflection prompts at the end helps hit some ELA standards as well, for a well-rounded activity.
As you close out your school year, may the odds be ever in your favor 🙂
Offer options with choice boards
Molly from The Littlest Teacher has found that this time of year, offering as much student choice as possible can help to maintain engagement.
Keeping a choice board or two on hand as end of year activities makes for a quick and easy lesson plan that is low-prep and low-effort for you, but involves meaningful work for students as part of your end of year activities.
If you just finished a novel or short story, check out these fun project ideas that you could allow students to choose among.
If you’d like to read some poetry, or just finished a poetry unit, this free digital poetry choice board would be perfect! It includes grading rubrics and everything, so no prep is required.
Some things to keep in mind when building a choice board for ELA:
- Make sure all the choices are of equal difficulty/require equal effort as much as possible. This way, students are choosing assignments or projects based more upon their interest in them, and less upon the amount of effort required.
- Try to incorporate several types of cognitive strengths/learning preferences. Offer options that require artistic expression, technology use, allow for creativity, and are just plain and straightforward (because some students prefer to have lots of parameters!).
- If you want students to complete more than one task, and/or you have choices of varying difficulty, arrange them strategically on a tic-tac-toe grid, and require that students complete a row of their choice. The vocab practice choice board is a great example of this.
- Make sure you have a grading rubric for each project or activity that’s on your choice board.
Explore identity with music
The end of the school year is a perfect time to be introspective and include time in your final stretch of classes for students to reflect on their personal journeys.
Katie from Mochas and Markbooks knows that introspection and vulnerability aren’t always the easiest tasks for the young adults in our classrooms, but a great way to provide a comfortable access point is through music.
Looking for a rewarding end of the year project? Ask your students to find songs that reflect different facets of identity.
Professor and researcher Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop said that literature can be viewed as a mirror when we see our own lives reflected, as a window to understand the lives and experiences of others, and as a sliding glass door when it transforms our understanding and changes our perspectives or beliefs.
For this project, students choose three different songs – one song that they feel mirrors their own experience, one song that allows them to look through a window to understand a different experience, and one song that allows them to walk through a sliding glass door into a new perspective.
For each song, have your students address the following points:
- Explain why you chose each song by describing how it acts as a mirror, window, and sliding glass door for you
- Provide specific examples from the lyrics that categorize the song as a mirror, window, and sliding glass door for you
- Describe how each song has helped you to understand different aspects of your own identity
Students can organize their work into many formats including an essay, slide presentation, poster, or video. You can choose one of these formats or allow your students the choice.
If you want to cut down on endless Google searches and iTunes shuffling, check out the resource Songs to Explore Identity for a notebook and slides with 60 songs tailored for this topic and a handout and rubric for the project described above done for you!
Write six-word stories
You might’ve already come across Six Word Stories and Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher says they are great for writing personal narratives at the start of the year, for summing up a recent read, and of course, for closing out the school year with a bang.
Six Word Stories require students to share an idea in, you guessed it, six words. After looking at some examples, consider writing a couple of your own, and then challenge your students to do the same!
Here are some prompts that might help your students take a look back or forward as the year comes to a close:
- A six word reflection of the school year
- A six word story from the perspective of your teacher
- A six word story from the perspective of your principal
- A six word informative statement about something you’ve learned this year
- A six word persuasive statement to the incoming class (words of advice)
- A six word summary comparing your expectation vs. reality of the school year/this class
- A six word story about the things you’re proud of achieving this school year
- A six word story of your goals for the next school year
- A message of appreciation to a staff member in six words
Students can display their six word stories on a note card, as a group with all their notecards on a poster, individually in video format, or even digitally. In a slide deck like this, students can read each other’s work and complete a short reflection on a Google Form.
As we all count down the school year, here’s hoping it flies by for you and that these end of year activities are helpful to get you across that finish line!
And then here’s hoping that the summer days are the slowest ever to keep the new school year at bay as long as possible so there’s plenty of time to relax and to recharge!
For more end of year teaching ideas check out these past posts from SmithTeaches9to12:
