How are you planning to close out the year with your students?

How are you planning to close out the year with your students to solidify your sense of community, build you and your students up, revisit the important things they learned, and identify what you want them to carry forward?

One activity I plan to use on the last day: Students brainstorm and “brain dump” class moments, units, and takeaways from the year. Students can come up and write them on the board or ideally on colorful Post-it notes that we arrange into an end-of-year visual display.

Afterwards, each student decorates a sheet of paper with their name. While a song we heard earlier in the year plays, students move around the room writing memories and messages for their classmates. Since I teach language, we first generate a shared bank of positive adjectives so students have accessible language to draw from as they write to each other.

Let’s share with one another to lift each other up, so we can better lift our students!