Those weeks between Spring and Summer break are crucial times in the school year. It’s when all the major revision and review happens before the final exams, and there’s a lot of great material to cover during those weeks, too! However, it’s often the point in the school year when students are the least motivated. Here are twenty activities to keep classes of all ages focused and motivated after Spring break so that they can finish the school year strong!
1. Keep it Lively with Music
One way to keep kids motivated is to incorporate music into your lesson plans. The novelty of the tunes will grab students’ attention, and relevant songs to your coursework can increase recall ability for end-of-term exams.
Learn More: Star Spangled Planner
2. Offer Brain Breaks Throughout the Day
To keep kids focused throughout the day, it’s important to offer brain break activities. These activities can break up the monotony of any class, and they offer a way to rest the brain, stretch the body, and prepare students for the next task before summer vacation.
Learn More: The Happy Teacher
3. Keep it Relevant
The time after Spring break is the perfect point in the semester to offer relevant, real-world examples of your curriculum in action. This helps students see beyond the classroom, and real-life activities related to your content area will also help with transferability on exams and beyond.
Learn More: Teaching with a Mountain View
4. Post-Spring Break Writing Prompt Freebies
If you want to find out what your students got up to over spring break, this pack of writing prompts can help. It offers printable sheets that will help students get their Spring break stories flowing, in a variety of different formats.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
5. Spring Break News Report Sharing
This fun writing activity encourages kids to take a journalistic look at their Spring break. Students will prepare a news copy to explain what they did over the break, and then present it to the class at the “news desk.”
Learn More: Teacher by the Beach
6. Use Interactive Review Quizzes
If you need students to remember and retain all that they learned before spring break, online interactive quizzes are a great option. Quizzizz features many fun activities. You can customize the information and topics for the quiz, or use a pre-made activity from the database. You can use it in class and OT as an individual study tool during and after spring break.
Learn More: Quizziz
7. Let Students Lead the Class
To keep your class entertained, consider letting students teach! The weeks after Spring break are often devoted to reviewing and letting students present and lead discussions that serve as an end-of-semester formative assessment.
Learn More: Faculty Focus
8. Classmate Scavenger Hunt
This activity is an icebreaker designed to get students re-familiar with their classmates after time away from school over break, and it also gives students the chance to share their spring break experiences. It consolidates the sharing, and it gets kids back in the classroom groove.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
9. Write Haikus About Spring Break
This poetry activity will have kids reflecting on their spring break experiences, and sharing them with finesse. It’s also a perfect way to teach syllables and haiku traditions, which is a lovely way to write about spring and their time away from school over break.
Learn More: The Butterfly Teacher
10. Make Memes Together
Memes are a popular way to express ourselves online, and you can motivate students to share their feelings and moods with memes in the classroom as well. It’s a motivational tool that will have the whole class laughing and staying motivated in the days after spring break and before the summer holiday.
Learn More: Amanda Write Now
11. Make Space More Effectively
Spring break is the perfect time to re-evaluate the way you’re using space in the classroom to make the class time count. As exam season approaches after spring break, you might want to rearrange your class setup. Make a plan and get students to help you optimize your classroom space on their first day back from spring break for more awesome times before the summer break.
Learn More: Differentiated Teaching
12. Practice Classroom Yoga
Springtime is the perfect season to take up a yoga practice and breathing activity and to bring your students along for the journey. These guided yoga video activities help students re-center activity and re-focus, even during the most difficult and demanding weeks of the academic year.
Learn More: Class Yoga Kids
13. Reflecting and Looking Ahead
These exercises encourage students to reflect on the whole semester so far and to look ahead and set goals for the remainder of the semester. Students will put the worksheets while looking at their output so far, and it helps them focus their studies in the weeks leading up to summer break.
Learn More: Bespoke Classroom
14. Review Your Classroom Routines
Spring break is the perfect time to take a hard look at classroom routines and see what needs to be tweaked in order to end the semester right. This guide helps you realign your expectations, and it helps you communicate these end-of-year expectations clearly to your students.
Learn More: Teaching Made Practical
15. Write a Letter About Spring Break
This activity encourages students to relate and reflect on their spring break. With this form, kids can write a letter to whomever they like to tell the stories of all they’ve seen and heard over Spring break.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
16. Reassess the Semester’s Goals
The week after Spring break is a great time to look back at the goals of the semester. This activity allows you to take a long hard look at the goals for the semester, to see how far they’ve come, and to realign goals looking towards the end of the semester.
Learn More: Empowering Education
17. Take Things Outside
To make the most of spring and to keep kids motivated before the Summer break, consider doing activities outside. You can do scavenger hunts, free reading time, or printable worksheets under the sun! You can also blend these activities with your everyday recess time.
Learn More: Building Book Love
18. Stay Engaged with Short Films
This resource is full of great worksheets and printables that refer to short films. Using movies in the classroom (or for virtual learning) is a great way to get and keep students engaged.
Learn More: Digi Goods and Printables ELA
19. Math Activities for After the Break
These activity sheets feature the best math practice for after the Spring school break. They include activity sections for review, as well as classroom activities that will help make the math concepts really stick so that kids can carry them through the Summer break and into the next school year.
Learn More: Blue Mountain Math
20. Top Ways to Engage Students After the Break
This is a go-to resource for any teacher who thinks they may have classroom management or motivation issues after Spring break. It breaks down not only activities but also mindsets that will make all the difference in those last few weeks of school!
Learn More: Teach Create Motivate
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