How Can I Prepare for the Last Weeks of School?

What do we really need to do during those last few weeks of school?

Hopefully, by this point in the year, you are done with testing, and pretty much finished with all the "have tos."  Even if you're not quite done teaching everything, I hope you have some time for some end-of-the-year fun!

 

Here are some things you can put into your plans for the last few weeks of school:

 

1. Deepen Learned Skills

 

 

Brain research tells us that we need to review skills in order to maintain them and to deepen them. That means fun activities and games to practice those important skills you've built all year! 

 

This bundle has several fun options for reviewing and deepening skills!

 

2. Prepare for summer habits

 

We want our students to continue some important habits they've developed through the school year. This is a great time to introduce some fun games!

 

Here are the links to a few posts that tell about classroom games that can be played at home:

 

Ten Easy Learning Games

Ten Reasons My Students Play Lots of Games 

 

Plus, here's one to encourage them to enjoy reading! (This is one you can work on all year!)

Relax and Read

3. Make the Last Days Special

 

 

It's time for using those skills they've worked on all year for some fun projects!

It's a perfect time of year for putting on a play or performance of some sort. These activities build important reading skills as well as building community and teamwork.  Here's a post with more information on Dramatics in the Classroom. 

I absolutely LOVE Boom Learning Digital Task Cards! These are easy to assign, and the students love them! Check out this bundle: Science and Social Studies Vocabulary Building Bundle

These are a great way to develop vocabulary for Science and Social Studies. They use brain-researched strategies such as Retrieval Practice, which is explained here:

Here are a few more resources that follow this strategy that are perfect for end-of-the-year review!

Fun and Engaging Digital Science Topics Practice and Review cards Deck #1

Fun and Engaging Digital Science Topics Practice and Review cards Deck #2

Fun and Engaging Digital Social Studies Topics Practice and Review cards Deck #1

Fun and Engaging Digital Social Studies Topics Practice and Review cards Deck #2

4. Share Memories

This is a great time of year to sit back and enjoy the special memories the group has made this year. 

 

It's easy to make a memory book, or a slide show with photos from the year. I've always had the children write down their favorite memories from the year a few weeks before the end of the school year. This gives me time to type things up into a nice book. I've also found parents are quite helpful in donating photos from school events.

These are special memories for them (and you) to cherish forever. I still have memory books from many years past, and I love remembering my former students!

5. Enjoy them

My favorite thing to do at the end of the school year is to take the time to enjoy these special children. I know, it's not easy! Between end-of-year testing, packing up the classroom, and report cards, there's little time left. But these kids are totally worth it, aren't they?  Here's a blog post that suggests some fun ways to enjoy the students. Take time to Enjoy them!
 

Enjoy these last few weeks with your students!

A Fun Way to Review Basic Information

If you're not familiar with the game of Scoot, it's time you learned! It can be played with any type of task card that would have a quick answer,  

(There are other awesome types of task cards for skills that require more time and thinking, but that's not what Scoot is about!)  

Brain research suggests that including movement will help the brain function more efficiently. Scoot has the children moving from place to place, which not only gets the brain going, but it makes the whole thing more fun for the kids! Individual cards are placed throughout the classroom, and the children move from spot to spot, performing the task, recording the answer on their answer sheet, then moving onto the next card in the next part of the room when the teacher calls "Scoot"! After much scooting, the children return to their starting spot.

For more about how Scoot works, see THIS BLOG POST.

I've used these with small groups and large groups. Sometimes you can take a few cards, have a handful of kids scoot through those, and save the rest of the cards in the series for another day.

The kids love Scoot! It's a great way to add fun to a review that can be rather mundane, like parts of speech or vowel sounds.  Yet, these things need to be practiced so these skills are strengthened.

A couple of years ago, I spent some time making several sets of Task Cards that are perfect for Scoot playing. I've spent the last couple of days updating these sets.

Social Studies Review: Scoot or Task Cards is a collection of questions on mapping and general Social Studies knowledge.  It can be played as a Scoot game, or just individual task cards. I made it to review end-of-the-year second-grade skills, but have heard that it's great review for older children as well!  See the image below to download this freebie.

Another product in this series, Vocabulary Review: Scoot or Task Cards gives the children vocabulary practice and review with prefixes, suffixes, antonyms and synonyms. (See image for link.)

Mathematics Review: Scoot orTask Cards reviews time, money, place value, measurement, story problems and fact families. (See image for link.)

Language Review: Scoot or Task Cards practices parts of speech:  nouns, proper nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. (See image for link.)

Phonics Review: Scoot or Task Cards practice vowel sounds: short vowels, long vowels, r-controlled vowels, and vowel teams. (See image for link.)

Science Review: Scoot or Task Cards reviews all sorts of beginning science concepts: five senses, basic biology, chemistry, astronomy, plants, and weather.

Plus, I have a set that bundles all 6 sets!  Combined Review- Word Work, Math, Science and Social Studies: Scoot or Task Cards gives you weeks worth of review activities for all subjects! This is a fun way to spend those last few weeks when the children just can't sit still and have lost their attention spans, or a great way to start the year, making sure they have the background knowledge they need.

But there's even more good news: All these items are available digitally with Boom Learning!

 These are perfect for end-of-the-year review, summer practice, or back-to-school reviewing basic concepts. They're appropriate for grades 2, 3, or 4!