As the school year draws to an end, you’re sure to want to send your students on their way with happy smiles. End-of-year activities offer the perfect way to get all students to work together during the last few weeks of school. An end-of-year activity booklet can serve as a memory book or a guide for the coming year/s. Although it may take some effort to pull together, it will be both meaningful and memorable for you and the entire class! Here are 25 ideas to get you started.
1. Year Summary
Divide the booklet into three parts- the beginning, middle, and end of the year. Allow the students to write about anything they remember about those times. Or, you could let them describe what they felt or thought during specific days of school.
Learn More: Laura Candler’s Teaching Resources
2. Calendar
Create a calendar or timeline where students can describe what they remember happening on specific dates. Let them draw pictures for each day. To jog their memories, discuss events with the class and take notes on the board.
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3. Favorite Memories
Have the students make a scrapbook of their favorite memories of the year. They may paste photos or describe what happened during a memorable day at school. Ask them to explain who they were with and what makes those memories special.
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4. Best Friends Scrapbook
Students can collect things that remind them of their friends. These memorabilia can be anything they can paste on paper- candy wrappers, letters, tickets, photos, and more. Let them decorate it however they want to and award additional points for the use of recycled materials!
Learn More: Everything About Scrapbooking
5. Describe Your classmates
Ask each student to describe their classmates and fill up one page per student. Students can write about characteristics they admire, their first impressions, or experiences they shared. Encourage them to talk to classmates they feel they don’t know very well.
Learn More: ESL Kid Stuff
6. Interview Your Classmates
Get your students to interview one another to learn more about classmates. List questions such as “What is your full name?” or “When’s your birthday?”, “What are your hobbies?” or “What do you plan to do in life?”.
Learn More: Teaching Made Practical
7. Best Of The Year
Preserve the year’s highlights by creating a booklet describing the year’s best! Some examples include the best school events, best celebrations, best classroom activities, best lessons, best teachers, best classmates, or best time period.
Learn More: Minds In Bloom
8. Student Lesson Plan
Let the students create their own lesson plans. It can serve as a review or assessment of how much they have learned. They could also make the lessons fun and create math games for the entire class, for example.
Learn More: Happy Teacher Mama
9. Teach Your Own Lessons
Let students create educational activities for something they’re interested in such as riding a bicycle, playing the guitar, or drawing. Have these photocopied and distribute them to every student so everyone can learn from their classmates. They can also present tutorials in class.
Learn More: Larry Ferlazzo
10. Problem-solving Booklet
Have students list problems and concerns they had during the year and then pass the booklet around to allow their classmates to provide solutions. This activity serves as a brainstorming session to help develop meaningful relationships among students.
Learn More: Centervention
11. Create a Design for the School Year
Ask students to design a logo or shield depicting the entire school year; including different events or times of the year. They can also portray various themes or design a clock with a face that depicts the different parts of their day.
Learn More: Ask Ultra
12. Summer Ideas
Give each student one of these fun print outs to make a “bucket list” of Summer activities. You can work on this as a class or you can have them work independently to come up with a bunch of ideas that they can try to tick off over the summer break! What a super way to get them amped up for the summer break!
Learn More: Twinkl
13. Suggestions for the Next School Year
Ask students for suggestions for the following year. It could include places they could visit on a field trip, enrichment activities, books to read, or goals to achieve. They could also give ideas on what to avoid doing!
Learn More: Sound Out
14. Tips for the Next Students
Get students to write to the new students who will occupy their classroom, providing their own “survival tips” and other classroom tools to help them throughout the year. Creating this guide will make them think about their learning and express themselves in a way that helps others.
Learn More: Teaching@Tufts
15. Teacher’s Survival Guide for Students
Ask students what they would’ve liked to know before they started the year and create a booklet with life advice, inspirational quotes, links to helpful websites, or book recommendations. Making one ensures you continue guiding them, even if you can’t provide your classroom instruction anymore.
Learn More: The Edvocate
16. The Best Work
Have the students compile their best work. They could include quiz papers with high scores, top-rated assignments, or projects. If they don’t have the material anymore, simply ask them to write about what they remember achieving.
Learn More: Authentic Assessment Toolbox
17. Teacher Report Card
Distribute blank copies of report cards and let your students grade you. Get feedback about your teaching skills, and encourage them to be sincere. You can make a fun collection of report card activities where you pretend to be the student.
Learn More: Creative Education
18. Messages for Classmates
Provide each student with a booklet with their name on it. Ask them to pass it around and get all students to write messages. Remind them that what they write should be kind and helpful.
Learn More: Comprehension Connect
19. Messages To Teachers
Give the students booklets with their teachers’ names, and ask them to write messages to each teacher. They can write about their favorite memories with them or suggestions for improving their next class. They could also express what they feel about the subject, such as their feelings about math.
Learn More: EdSource
20. Messages To Students
Each student will give their booklet to their teacher, who will compose individualized letters for them. These could serve as a more personal and in-depth report card. The teachers may also provide some advice to their students for the coming years.
Learn More: Write Thank You Notes
21. Create Your Own Class Pictures
Get students to sketch their classmates, whether realistically or animatedly. After completing this picture, they will explain why they depicted them that way. This activity will give the class insights into the unique perceptions of their classmates.
Learn More: Tate Kids
22. Quiz Booklets
Turn your students into quiz masters by getting them to create quizzes that their teachers and classmates will answer. Ask them to provide the answer key at the back of the booklet. They can also pose the questions as riddles or make up creative worksheet instructions.
Learn More: Science Daily
23. Comic Strips
Allow the students to exercise their drawing and writing skills by letting them create comic strips about their school year. They can color these themselves or have others color them in.
Learn More: Learn
24. Predictions for the Next Year
Ask the students to predict how their following year will turn out based on what they’ve heard from the senior students or their own expectations. They can even pretend to have a credit card that allows them to buy whatever they want for the incoming year.
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25. Creative Writing Assignment
Enhance your students’ creativity by letting them compose poems, short stories, or songs about their school experiences. The musically inclined may provide chords or notes to songs and perform them for the class.
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