A crumpled wad of paper flies past my face, I’m missing two kids, and wait a second… is there something BURNING? The end of the school year can be tough, but I’ve come a long way since my first year. I’ll help you avoid making the same mistakes I did with my tried-and-true solutions for keeping sane during the end of the school year activities.
Not all of them have happy, comfortable home lives and the structure, routine and predictability that you provide in your classroom makes their little lives easier.
Sticking to your schedule, giving advance notice of any significant changes, and continuing with daily routines is a great way to keep your students from falling off the rails with weeks or months to go.
This isn’t easy to do, especially once report cards are finished and everything feels a little like “busy work,” but if you are creative, you’ll be just fine.
I like to pull out our Memory Books – they take days to fully complete and allow my students to reflect on the great times we’ve had throughout the year.
Collaborative art activities like this Memory Quilt
We have a list of things we want to have accomplished before that time, and that includes packing up the classroom.
I think it is important to not start shutting your classroom down too early for the same reasons that you shouldn’t let your routines go.
If students walk into an empty space because you’ve started pulling your anchor charts and décor down, you’ve sent them a message: “I’m done, so you might as well be done too.”
Not a message you want to communicate with weeks or even days still to go!!
I ALWAYS do the majority of the job with my students’ help. This keeps them busy gives them shared ownership over this space that you’ve shared for ten months, and allows them some closure as summer draws near.
In my
classroom, as the end of the year draws nearer my students start to look and sound like little whirlwinds. Some are clearly very excited while others are anxious and acting out.
Hard as it may be, I make sure that I am consistent with enforcing all of my classroom rules and expectations and continue to deliver consequences as needed.
This goes hand-in-hand with a predictable routine. If it wasn’t okay to blurt out answers before, then it shouldn’t be alright at the end of the school year.
Have some fun with them. Go on a field trip, have a picnic, do some things outside of your regular routine to celebrate the time you spent together.
One of my favorite things to do is an ABC Countdown to the end of the school year.
For the last 26 days, every new day has a unique spin on it. These are really small, manageable events like Animal Day where students get to bring a stuffed animal, Beach Day or Crazy Hair Day – the day is really business as usual, but the kids don’t realize that!