Meaningful End-of-Year Activities to Upgrade the Last Days of School

End-of-year Activities

• Have the class help pack up the room. You can put them in groups and assign them tasks. They can clean desks, Chromebook screens, label classroom furniture with room number. If they finish, have a packet of fun stuff for them to work on. (From Jenni G. + Debi K.)
• The last 10 days of school, have the students pop a balloon each day with something special to do inside: have a picnic, play with bubbles or chalk outside. (From MaryAnne A.)
• Put together a keepsake book of pictures and pages and Mad Libs for summer. You can also do board game centers where students rotate through playing board games. You can also have students write letters to the incoming class and share important things to know about this grade. (From Anna C.)
• Have a "Super Hero Summer Birthday Party" for students with summer birthdays. (From Lisa W.)
• Write a letter to your class and read it to them. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on the year or semester and encourage them as they go. You can do this with any grade: high schoolers loved it. (From Karly S.)

Try this Easy End-Of-year project

STEP 1: CHOOSE THE PROMPT

You need to decide what the basic idea of the video would be. This will depend vastly on your subject & the age of your students.  Here are a few ideas to get you thinking in the right direction:

• Re-enact a historical event or scene from a book
• Show how a historic or literary figure might have handled  themselves in modern times
• Create a video that explains how [topic] works - bonus points for creativity! (This is especially good for math and science)
• Pretend you’re a teacher and have to explain [topic] to your class. How would you do that?
• Make your own exercise video (for P.E.)
• Create a scene all in [foreign language]

STEP 2: MAKE A LIST OF TOPIC CHOICES

Once you have the general prompt, create a list of topic choices for students to choose from. For example, if your prompt is to re-enact a historical event, create a list of events that they can choose from.

Keep in mind that everyone will probably want to watch their classmates’ videos, so this is a great opportunity for an amazing year-end review. Simply choose topics that you’ve studied or touched on throughout the year, and then ensure that no more than two students choose the same topic.

STEP 3: EXPLAIN THE PARAMETERS

Give students clear instructions, including how long the video should be, and whether they can work together or not.

STEP 4: WATCH THE VIDEOS TOGETHER

Once the students are finished, watching the videos together as a class will not only be a fun way to give some closure to your year, but it will also provide a tremendous year-end review.

If you aren’t able to watch them all together in, post them to your class website so that everyone can view their classmates’ videos on their own time.

Consider having the class vote on awards such as….

• Most creative video
• Most well-produced video
• Most academically impressive video
• Most entertaining video
• Best of show

Other Ideas

• Take your students outside if you can!
• Have students make fun review quizzes or Kahoots for next year's students.
• Make a Google Form escape room or a scavenger hunt for your students based on your class content.
• For older kids: have students make google form escape rooms one day, then have students participate in them the next day.
• Have students give 1-minute presentations on topics from your class.
• Have students share their favorite memories from your class.
• Give out class awards to your students.