Ideas for End-of-Year Activities

I know this can be a stressful time between the kids excitement at school almost being over and all the lists of things that need to get done. But I enjoy being able to go off script a little bit. I do daily themes and allow students to apply skills they have learned throughout the year.

We did a Food Truck unit-we read several books about food trucks including 

We used language of the disciplines to talk about vocabulary a chef would use and then also talked about the job of marketing and how they would come up with a name for their truck and a concept. Then I broke the students into groups and they were to come up with what their food truck would be called, what it would look like and a menu. Then they presented their truck to the group.

Make a song/commercial for our school. Again they worked in groups to take a melody of their choice and change the lyrics to be about our school. They really got into this one clapping out the beats and looking for rhymes. After practicing they performed it for the class.

Art Theme-it is very important to me that we incorporate art into our daily plans. We learned about a lot of famous artists this year and the vocabulary that goes along with creating art. For this activity we thought like Mondrian and made a creation using his primary colors/shapes. Then we painted like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.  Now rest assured, I did go over with them that the fact he painted the chapel ceiling on his back is actually a myth-but it is really hard to paint a ceiling. So we taped paper up under the tables-each artist had an assistant and using watercolors they attempted to create a masterpiece of their own.

Escape Room-we do a lot of escape rooms throughout the year. This one I made clues to identify which classmate stole the cookie from the cookie jar. "This students has a few friends, actually he has many, he drives his teacher crazy, always talking about Kenny" (this student is obsessed with South Park. They also had word searches, puzzles to put together to see which classmate as well as code breaking and addition to solve for the letters. It was the most fun escape room we did all year!

I will miss this amazing group of boogerbears! :)

Memories

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. Teachers every day are saying "it's almost over", "just a few more days". But it's hard for me to say goodbye to a group of students that have become a family over the past 10 months. I also find packing up a classroom very stressful-I wish we had more time to really go through things and organize.

We talk about memories. We read the book:

There is a video on Storyline Online where Bradley Whitford reads this story aloud.

They discuss what is a memory? I then ask the students to write the same. How can you define that word without using the word "memory" or remember.

We also read the book:

Students draw their own memory jars and write/draw things they will remember about their year in 1st grade. 

She is talking about the game Blooket. :)

Yes it breaks my heart that the lockdown is one of his memories. :(

Finally they write a letter to themselves. They write about what they think they will be like in 5th grade. I place these letters in a time capsule and distribute the letters to those who are still at our school in 4 more years. 

Only One You

One of our end-of-year activities is to read the book:

We watched several graduation speeches where people gave their advice. I asked the students to write about what their advice for someone going out into the world would be:

Measuring Growth

My district is adopting a merit based pay system. As a teacher of young kids I do not agree with these kinds of systems. I know our data is important but my students grow in so many different ways-not just in reading and math scores. And just this year my class had 9 students identified as "urgent intervention" when other teachers had zero. The measure is on grade level so if they are below grade level it doesn't even often show growth. 

We write every day. I have my students write in their writing journals the first week and then sit down with them this time of year to review the progress they have made. Sometimes they say "I didn't write like that" --yes honey, you did. :) 

I wish more often portfolios were accepted as ways to show growth as well. Here is one student:

She is now using spaces between her words, using adjectives, spelling sight words.

This student is now writing in complete sentences, using spaces, punctuation.

So they grew! I share this with my parents as well. I like to do student led conferences where students can share their progress with their parents.

Just remember that there are many different ways to grow throughout the school year.

Assessing Creativity

There is a controversy in the research world-can creativity be taught? Some say no but in my experience creativity can definitely be enhanced. It is my first vocabulary word to teach them and we do various activities throughout the year to practice what it means to be creative.

My first assessment is divergent art. Divergent art is when we give students a shape or a line and ask them to incorporate that into a picture. I judge it by how unique their answer is-usually if I start with an S-shape I end up with  22 snakes. I also look at how detailed and colorful their pictures are.

I LOVE how I can measure growth in their portfolios as well as their test scores.

Surveys With Young Students

I always survey my parents and students throughout the year. I think it's so important to hear opinions in a safe way. The problem is with young kids they LOVE everything! So I had to figure out a way to ask them questions that would give me insight without them knowing that's what I was doing. 

What does your teacher always say? We have student leaders that take the lead during lessons and I hear myself through them.

I ask them: What does your teacher like? If they write the name of a student (which has happened) then I know I am not being fair and equitable. For this they will talk about "Henry" just FYI that is my dog. :)

What does your teacher not like: if they write "talking in class" or "failing a spelling test"-that's not the kind of culture I try to develop.

Jusst for fun I ask them what I like to eat and drink.

Then how does your teacher feel about the class? I feel like 70% of what we do is classroom management and there are days I feel like all I do is fuss-I want to make sure they know I love them.

Our Digital Mother's Day Projects

It is very important to me that my students know there are many different ways they can publish their thoughts and give them multiple ways to this using technology.

I use Pear Deck but I have also heard great things about Book Creator. The students draw and type text on the slides. We then put it into a powerpoint and record their narration exporting it into videos. We invite our moms/caregivers to a Mother's Day Tea and play all the videos. Usually not a dry eye in the house.

Here are our videos from this year. (One of our first vocabulary words was "dazzling" -it's one of their favorite words to use as you can see. All our moms were dazzling).