You’ve planned your lesson, chosen an introductory and follow-up activity, and gathered all your resources. Now what? Wrapping up a lesson is as important as the lesson itself. Your lesson wrap-up can help you evaluate whether your teaching method was effective and whether students understand the concepts. It can also help solidify their comprehension in a fun way. This list has 28 fabulous wrap-up activities that you can use in your classroom.
1. Jenga
Jenga is a fun game where you build a tower using small pieces of wood. You then have to try and take out a block without breaking the tower. This game can be turned into a fun wrap-up activity by writing questions or facts on each block to have your students review the content they’ve just covered in the lesson.
Learn More: The Ideal Teacher
2. Read the Room
For this activity, you will need big, white pieces of paper. Divide the class into four groups and tell each group to go to a corner in the classroom. Give each group a topic or heading to summarize. They will then put the papers up on the classroom walls and move around to read what other groups have written.
Learn More: Total Participation
3. Play Kahoot
Kahoot is a fun and engaging quiz game where the teacher can create quizzes, and the students can all respond on their own devices. It’s a great way to keep students engaged and recap the lesson or chapter. You will need a computer and cell phones, and you can even divide students into groups and have them compete.
Learn More: Kahoot!
4. Role Play
Role play is always a fun activity to wrap a lesson up, especially if it’s about literature or historical events. The students can dress up according to the time period and setting. They can then write their own scripts and even design the sets.
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5. Scavenger Hunt
Everyone loves a good scavenger hunt, and it’s also a great way to wrap up a lesson. You can create riddles and clues based on keywords from your main lesson. Students will then need to guess the right description based on what they just learned. Write questions and clues and place them around the classroom. Only if the students answer correctly can they get a new clue.
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6. Jeopardy-Style Game
Use this game platform to create your own Jeopardy-style game. Jeopardy is a fun game that will test your students’ knowledge and encourage them to pay attention during the lesson. Students also get the chance to review the content by listening to the correct responses of other students.
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7. News Broadcast
This fun wrap-up activity is perfect for lesson closures and will create a culture of learning. Divide students into pairs and have each pair summarize an idea or subject in the form of a news broadcast. You can make it fun with props, a camera crew, and even a teleprompter.
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8. Snow Storm
This is a fun, quick activity to help students recall what they learned. It’s so simple that it can be done after every section or chapter. Students write the main idea or a summary of the content down on a piece of white paper and then crumble it up and throw it in the air. Each student then picks up someone else’s snowball and reads it aloud.
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9. Write a Song
Put the students in groups and tell them to write a song or rap about what they have learned about a certain topic. This is a great way for students to learn how to summarize and present important information.
Learn More: Creative Closure
10. Beach Ball Breakdown
Write numbers on it and learners can answer the question that correlates with a number. Whoever catches the ball has to answer the question of the number on top of the ball. There are many different variations to this game.
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11. Minute Paper
This quick and effective closure technique only takes a minute of the lesson and is helpful to both the students and the teacher. At the end of the lesson, the students have one minute to write down what they have learned and what they still want to know.
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12. Exit Tickets
Exit tickets are a good way for teachers to track their students’ understanding and determine whether their own teaching style is working for the students. They can ascertain whether or not they need to reteach certain concepts. If just one or two students are having a hard time grasping a concept, the teacher can easily just recap with them.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
13. Clear or Cloudy
Clear or cloudy is another quick and fun way to determine if students need help understanding certain concepts. They write down the points that they understand and write down the questions that they have about things that are still ‘cloudy’.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
14. Thinking Maps
Thinking maps are a great way to allow students to use their thinking skills to evaluate what they’ve learned and logically sort it into one of these thinking maps.
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15. Recap App
This fun app is a quick and easy way to recap a lesson and incorporate technology. The platform is user-friendly and customizable; making recapping a delight!
Learn More: The Techie Teacher
16. Google Slides
Google Classroom and Google slides are not only good to use for wrap-up activities, but are great to use for the entire lesson. The possibilities are endless!
Learn More: The Techie Teacher
17. 3-2-1
3-2-1 is a simple way to get students to think about what they’ve learned, track their understanding, make critical decisions, and create their own opinions.
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18. Sticky Notes
Ask your students to write tone piece of information that stuck with them from the lesson on a sticky note. This can help teachers determine what they learned and may also help if there are misconceptions or confusion about the lesson.
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19. Bingo
Bingo is always a fun way to close a lesson. Write lesson-related keywords and concepts on Bingo cards and have your students match them to a definition.
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20. Roll and Retell
This simple activity is a great way to recall the main idea of a story or concept. Each student can have a die and share their answer with a partner.
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21. Self Assessment
It’s important for students to learn how to self-reflect and assess their learning. This self-assessment wrap-up activity will get your students to think critically about their own mathematical learning.
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22. Quiz Games
You can get these fun buzzers and have a quick quiz at the end of each lesson to establish if your students are ready to move on to the next topic.
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23. Whip Around
This quick activity allows students to verbally share their thoughts and summaries of the lesson with their peers by passing a ball around. Whoever catches the ball must share one thought.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
24. Fishbowl
Allow each student to write a question they have about the lesson. Let the students form two circles, one inner and one outer circle. The student in the outer circle can ask the person in front of them in the inner circle a question, then switch.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
25. The 5 W’s
Ask the students questions related to what, who, where, when, and why. This is a fast way to summarize the content of a lesson- especially a history or literature lesson. You can change the questions to only use the ones applicable to the lesson.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
26. Thumbs Up
Thumbs up is a super easy way to check for understanding. Simply ask your students to answer questions with a thumbs up if they understand a concept or a thumbs down if they don’t understand.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
27. Riddles
Create a fun riddle about certain concepts or main ideas that were taught during the lesson. Write the riddle down on the board or simply say it aloud and let the students try to solve it before leaving.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
28. Quick Doodles
This fun activity can be used for most language and social studies lessons. Give each student a blank piece of paper and let them draw a quick doodle about the lesson. It can be about a character, physical thing, concept, or representation of abstract thoughts. This will allow them to think critically about what they’ve learned and also be creative.
Learn More: Mountain View School District
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