10 Ideas to End the School Year with a Spark

on

10 Ideas to End the School Year with a Spark

Fireworks shooting into the night sky

The end of the school year is usually a bittersweet time. We are excited for our students as they begin the next chapter in their education and are proud of their progress in our classes. At this point in the school year, we know our students best. To wrap up our year, we may host awards ceremonies, award certificates, reflect upon our work, participate in games and competitions, or host field day activities. 

The final weeks of the school year also may mean as educators, we are saddened that our students' progression to the next grade level also means they will be leaving our classroom. The pandemic has added an even more emotional layer to the end of the school year. This end is certainly not how we planned, or wanted, to end our school year, and it is okay to be saddened by that. 

However, despite our situation, as educators, we continue to rise above and make magic happen despite the chaos of our current situation. While the end of our school year looks very different than how it began, we can still provide the fun, positive, social-emotional boosts that typically come with the end of the year activities. There are ways to add opportunities for closure, celebrations, awards, games/field day events, inquiry activities, and reflections, even in a virtual environment. As we wrap up the year with celebration activities, we may find that while we are filling up our students' buckets with positivity, our students are filling up ours. 

Check out the carefully curated ideas below to end the school year on a positive note. Many of the examples include ready-to-use, customizable templates for easy implementation. 

1. Awards, Certificates, Badges

Many educators (and schools) host end of year awards ceremonies to honor student growth over the school year. While your building may be putting together a bigger celebration, remote learning and teaching does not mean you can't host a classroom celebration! Host a Google Meet awards ceremony to honor your students. If a student is unable to attend, you can still give them their award during the Meet, record the Meet, and post for them to view later so they are still included in the festivities. Looking for award and certificate templates? There are many out there!

 

2. Games and Competitions

Add the spirit of competition to your end of the year activities! There are many options for online gaming available, most of which have the option to create review games from scratch or borrow questions from a library of games in case you are pressed for time. For more fun, ask students to write and submit their own review questions to be included in the game! Consider the following lesson ideas and tools:

Review Game Lesson Ideas:
  • Host a "live" game during a Google Meet for more of a "live", in-person experience.
  • Host an offline game to provide all students an opporutnity to participate and compete.
  • Ask students to contribute questions to be included in the review game.
Review Game Tools:

  • Kahoot: Kahoot is a review game where students answer on their device but rely on the teacher to advance to the next review question. 
  • Quizizz: Quizizz is an individually paced review game where students complete questions on their own device and do not need to rely on the teacher for pace. Quizizz has fun memes and pictures to encourage the students as they work through questions. 
  • GimKit: GimKit is a review game similar to Quizizz, but have options with what they can do with earned points. In GimKit, students can use points earned  "level up" to double their points, lose less points for incorrect answers, and more! 
  • GeoGuessr: GeoGuessr is a geography based game that "drops" the user somewhere in the world and the user tries to guess where they are based upon the surroundings (satellite images). Host a live GeoGuessr game as a class on a Google Meet, or give students the GeoGuessr link to play on their own schedule.
  • Google Earth-Voyager: Google Earth is the world's most detailed globe, with interactive panoramic images and multimedia. Use the "voyager" feature in Google Earth to incorporate review games with a global twist into your lessons. With voyager games, students answer questions as they travel the world and interact with video, images, and text.
    • Check out a previous blog post to see how to get started and how a BCSC teacher uses Google Earth for fun review with first grade students.

3. Escape Room / Digital Breakout with Google Forms

Ask your students to put their investigative skills to the test with a digital breakout, or escape room. With escape rooms becoming a popular entertainment trend worldwide, incorporating this fun, collaborative game in a lesson will surely boost engagement. In an escape room, or breakout, individuals complete a series of puzzles and tasks. Thanks to technology, escape rooms do not have to be limited to facilities and physical locations. Teachers can create (or borrow) digital escape rooms using tools like Google Forms or resources from the popular educational breakout room vendor, BreakoutEDU (free-ish, some features are paid).  

Want to experience a digital escape room for yourself? Check out this eLearning example!

Cartoon of classroom with escape room links
Check out this sample escape room in a Bitmoji-classroom-style format

To "break out" of a digital escape room, students are presented with a series of tasks which can include reading documents, watching videos, or completing puzzles. When the student completes the task, the student enters a response on a Google Form which has been set up to validate correct responses. In a digital version, students can work independently or the teacher can provide students with the option to participate as a team, communicating ideas on a Google Doc and with one person serving as the scribe to enter answers on the Form.

4. Show and Tell

Host a virtual "show and tell" to end the school year. You pick the focus! Students can show and tell their proudest achievements of  the year, favorite lesson, favorite topic, something they are proud of accomplishing during quarantine, or more. Ideas for organizing show and tell:

  • Google Slide: Each student creates a Google Slide for their "show and tell". Students can add text, images, audio, and video to the slide for flexible, personalized experience. The teacher can compile all of the slides into one show and present to the class.

  • Google Slide + Meet: Each student creates a Google Slide with their show and tell. Students have the option to join a Google Meet conference call. For students who are able to join the call, the students can use their slide or speak on the call. For those unable to attend, the teacher can show and explain their slide so all are represented.

5. Reflections

What better time to reflect upon than the final days of the school year? Ask students to reflect on moments during the year: favorite memories, biggest achievement, favorite lesson/subject, something that stood out to them. Students can share their reflections with you G-Suite (Google) resources. For the fastest way to share a blank Google tool or template with a student, create a Google integrated assignment on itslearning!

  • Google Slides for a slideshow style reflection presentation.
    • Students can add multimedia, audio, and video for more interactive reflecting.
  • FlipGrid for video reflections.
  • Google Doc for a typed, written format.
  • Google Drawing for a poster style reflection piece.
    • Students can include multimedia, links, and more within a Google Drawing.
  • Google Form
    • Teachers can create a short Google Form survey with reflection questions to guide students as they consider their answers to the questions.

6. Memory/Photo Slideshow Video or Video Board
Commemorate student achievements and reflect on learning experiences from the year with a slideshow video. There are many tools and options available for creating slideshows-for simple options:

  • Google Slides Memory Video: Add photos, audio, and a self-advanced slides setting  to a Google slides presentation. Students can submit their own slides for extra fun! 
    • Add photos: Add via the "insert" button. Select photos from Google Drive, Google Photos, or photos saved locally on your device.
    • Self-advancing slides: In the "present" settings on slides, you can toggle settings so that the slides will automatically advance after a period of time. 
    • Add music or audio: To make the slideshow a video with music, you can create a screen recording using a screencasting tool like Screencastify (premium version is available to all BCSC staff). To add music, record the slideshow playing with screencastify and have music playing in another tab at the same time for a quick option. Or, add video to the slideshow by clicking the "insert", "add audio" option. Note-this option does require that you have audio files saved on your device in advance.
  • FlipGrid Memory Board: FlipGrid is a video response platform. Celebrate memories of the school year by creating a memory board, or "grid" on FlipGrid. Students can add their own videos to reflect on the school year. Additional slides, links, Docs, and elements can also be added!

7. Scavenger Hunt

Encourage collaboration, inquiry, and fun with an end of the year scavenger hunt! The scavenger hunt can focus on content learned during the school year or can be unrelated bonus fun. Plus, scavenger hunts provide opportunities for high tech and low tech options:

High tech options:

  • Google Earth: Create a geography focused scavenger hunt and hide clues all around the world! Using the "My Projects" feature on Google Earth, insert clues on the globe. The "My Projects" feature can support text, audio, images, video, and multimedia as clues. Students can share their answers via a Doc, Form, or whatever format you prefer!
  • Google Meet Hunt: Host a scavenger hunt via Google Meet! Questions can focus on items found on the interent, content learned during the school year, or common household items (select items carefully-with consideration to those who may not have some items at home). There are many samples available on the internet.
  • Fliphunt (FlipGrid Scavenger Hunt): Use the video response platform FlipGrid for a scavenger hunt where participants post short videos to submit their scavenger hunt answers. If students are camera shy, they can use stickers and additional settings to hide their face from view. Curious to see an example?
Low tech options:
  • Create a short list of scavenger hunt tasks and share via Google Docs/itslearning message. As students complete the tasks, they can message you back on itslearning or submit their responses in one photo rather than individual photos or videos.

8. Top 10 Lists

Lists are commonly used to draw reader's attention in blogging (if you are reading this blog post, you have also fallen victim to the strategy of enticing magnetic headlines). Our brains prefer information in shorter chunks and process information if it is a smaller, manageable load. While lists may sound simple, creating lists can also be considered a higher order thinking task if students are curating items for a list and explaining their thinking. Consider, if you had to share your top five movies of all time, you would provide some type of reasoning or anecdote for why you collected them. Asking students to create top ten lists at the end of the year provides our students to dig deeper into their memory and learning and practice their evaluative skills. Plus, creating lists can be fun, if done David Letterman style! The following tools are fairly simple to use and lend themselves to list making:

  • Google Keep: Create virtual sticky notes with Google Keep. Students can organize their top 10 lists in Google Keep and directly share with the teacher when finished.

  • Wakelet: A curation tool designed to help students organize their resources, a user can create a collection of items (known as a "wakelet"), order the items, and add supporting details such as text, video, audio, slides, images, and more. 

9. Random Internet Inquiry Fun

Encourage inquiry with random knowledge, trivia, and internet fun! Students can check out one of the resources below, research, and share what they've learned for a low-stakes, student-interest focused inquiry activity option.
  • Landlines: Start with a line and let the planet complete the picture! Draw and Google will find a landscape somewhere in the world that matches the drawing.

  • Neal. fun: Spark discussion with the graphics available on Neal.fun. Staff (or students) can click a sample graphic and conduct research. For others, students can explain their interpretation of the graphic.

  • Which One Doesn't Belong: Created by math teachers but geared towards any teacher, this site contains a series of images with the prompt, "which one doesn't belong?" There are no right or wrong answers-just an opportunity to apply, interpret, and explain your own thinking!

  • Shapegrams: Use Google Drawing templates to challenge students to recreate illustrations, shapes, and cartoons.


10. Advice for Future Students...and Selves

Help provide your future students with sound advice from the students who have been in their shoes before! Ask students to share advice for future students in their class. Gather responses via itslearning, Google Docs, or a short Google Form. The students' responses can also provide helpeful insight for lesson planning in the future.

Want to have students write to their future selves? Check out FutureMe - students can write themselves a letter to be emailed in the future. If they enter their BCSC email account (Google account), they can access the letter in high school.


As you plan to finish the school year, know that whatever you decide to do will be wonderful for your students. What they've needed most during this time is you-and you've been there, no matter what, whatever it takes. For this, we all thank you!



Have an idea you would like to share? We would like to hear your ideas! 

Submit the survey or via the "Contact" tab.

Lesson ideas and select templates courtesy of Ditch That Textbook and Teacher Tech with Alice Keeler.

Comments

Post a Comment