Why Theme Days Will Save You at the End of the School Year [episode 125]

Emily  0:37

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re talking about using theme days to help you survive the end of year and sharing a teacher approved tip for a low prep fast finisher.

Heidi  0:49

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is this is a good one. ruin a field trip in four words. People had a lot of fun with this one.

Emily  1:04

Yeah, Melissa said kid just threw up. And lots of other teachers shared the same one.

Heidi  1:12

Consider this a friendly reminder to bring plastic bags with you on your next field trip. Yes,

Emily  1:17

Yes, and I am so sorry to say that my child has been the child that grew up on a field trip and I just as a former teacher, I feel so much guilt that it wasn’t my child. I’m so sorry.

Heidi  1:29

You’re letting down the cause Emily,

Emily  1:31

Janelle said parent cussed around students. Yikes. Stacy said forgot to schedule transportation. Oh, no. No, there’s no way to book buses at the last minute.

Heidi  1:43

I’ve recently had a nightmare that the opposite problem happened. I guess my four words would be forgot to tell parents. I dream that the buses showed up. But we had forgotten to let anyone else know that we are going on a field trip. No permission slips nothing. I’m glad it was just a dream. The things teachers dream about.

Emily  2:02

Well, Christine has the real nightmare. I can’t find him. Or this one from Holly. This kid isn’t ours. And Misty adds. We have a stowaway. Oh no. She says That’s a true story from a trip to DC. Oh gosh. I think we need more details, Misty.

Emily  2:22

Donna has the classic. I pooped my pants. Again, bring the plastic bags. I guess that will help too much though, unless you have something to change into. I have to visit the gift shop depending where you are.

Heidi  2:33

I had a student do that at a play once no notice to hear back on the bus and couldn’t identify the smell. Oh yeah. Good times. Shareeka has this true story. She says teacher river fell in. Shareeka I think we need more of the details there.

Emily  2:51

Yeah. Teresa has another true story bus is in ditch. She said no one was hurt. But we were stuck and missed the trip because there was no tow truck for hours. Yikes.

Heidi  3:03

Katie said the bathrooms are locked.

Emily  3:07

And Amy’s got the one we’ve all heard. I forgot my lunch. We had awesome lunch workers, though, who always sent us extra lunches just in case. I would hope that most schools do that.

Speaker 1  3:17

Well that’s assuming that the lunches get on the bus. Cara says where are the lunches?

Emily  3:22

Oh no. Kim has this nightmare. What’s fifth’s disease?

Heidi  3:28

Oh no, no. April says chaperones canceled last minute.

Emily  3:33

Oh man. Field trips are not for the faint of heart teachers, you are amazing. And we would love to hear you ruin a field trip in four words over in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily  3:45

Teaching during the last month of school is one of the biggest challenges as teachers. You are completely burnt out after a long demanding year and your students are getting antsy from the good weather with the promise of summertime looming just around the corner.

Heidi  4:00

But I guess unfortunately, we can’t just write off the last month and do nothing. And completely throwing out your previous schedule will upset that delicate balance of overwhelm and boredom that we talked about so often when we discuss student engagement.

Emily  4:15

So what’s a teacher to do? Well, we have something that has worked amazing for us at the end of the year theme days. Now, what are the benefits of theme days, Heidi?

Heidi  4:26

Well, there are a couple of really big benefits to doing theme days. First off theme days, keep your students engaged.

Emily  4:33

The thing we want most as teachers is for our students to be actively engaged in what we’re doing each day.

Heidi  4:35

Right. The more engaged students are, the less likely they are to be off task and causing problems.

Emily  4:47

So that’s a big win right there.

Heidi  4:48

And most importantly, if they’re engaged, they’re more likely to actually be learning something.

Emily  4:53

So the reason theme days works so well for engagement at the end of the year, is because of that engagement motto we discuss all the time. So Heidi, remind us about our engagement model? What does that look like?

Heidi  5:05

Well picture an old timey balance scale, or one of those plastic ones that you put the little bears in and math. On one side of the scale, we have routine. And on the other side of the scale, we have novelty. You need to find the perfect balance between those two things to keep your students engaged.

Emily  5:23

At the beginning of the year, everything is naturally very novel. So you are going to be dumping most of your coins, so to speak, into the routine side of the scale to keep your kids from being overwhelmed.

Heidi  5:35

But at the end of the year, your routines are so well worn that that side of the scale is overflowing, leading to a major cause of student boredom.

Emily  5:45

We need to combat that by adding in novelty, and themed days are the perfect way to do that. So your students are still engaged each day even as you march towards summer break.

Heidi  5:57

The second huge benefit is not to be ignored. theme days make planning easier. Is there anyone more done than a teacher at the end of the school year? No way. This job requires so much of you that it is so common for teachers to be running on fumes the last few weeks of school.

Emily  6:17

And to make matters worse, you likely had to cram all your content into the previous months to prepare your students for end of year testing. So with your curriculum done, what are you supposed to do with these remaining weeks of school? We have found theme days to be the perfect option for those funny weeks, you still need to plan for.

Heidi  6:35

Theme days likely sound like a ton of work, but they really don’t have to be. Yes, they do require some prep, you’ll need to invest some time and resources upfront to get your materials ready, and gather some books and other supplies. But bonus, you can use them again year after year after year.

Emily  6:55

And theme days really do make planning easier. Because you have a certain structure for the day that you want to follow, you’re going to do a set number of activities so that can limit your plans from feeling too overwhelming.

Heidi  7:06

So if you want to boost student engagement and simplify your planning at the same time, theme days are the perfect end of your solution.

Emily  7:15

Now what do we mean by theme day? A theme day is just a day of fun learning activities designed around a certain theme. The theme is what adds the novelty you’re looking for to boost engagement. But it’s also a way to increase structure. The theme puts boundaries around the novelty so it doesn’t become a wild free for all. You’re channeling the novelty into one direction. So it helps curb overwhelm and boredom.

Heidi  7:41

The decision that you need to make up front is how immersive you want your theme days to be. And there’s truly no right or wrong answer here. You do not need to do a full classroom transformation in order to have a fun theme day.

Emily  7:55

If you want to do a classroom transformation, then by all means more power to you. For some teachers, a classroom transformation is the sort of thing they love about teaching. And having some of those at the end of the year would just light them up. And they absolutely should do that then.

Heidi  8:11

But if that sounds overwhelming to you, it’s absolutely not necessary. Emily and I definitely never did full blown transformations, because we didn’t have the energy for that. And my personal rule for myself is that I didn’t plan anything in my class that required me to climb so I’m not hanging anything from the ceiling.

Emily  8:30

Plus, I have that personal no DIY rules. So a whole classroom transformation would violate my personal beliefs. But you get to decide make your theme day as simple or as involved as it feels enjoyable to you. Don’t feel any guilt. Whether you go simple or go all out. I’ve seen both decisions being shaded. So don’t let that into your life. Whichever one you choose is right for you and that is great.

Heidi  8:59

The next thing you need to decide is how much of your routine you want to keep. What Emily and I like to do is instead of a full transformation, we kept our regular schedule and we just made the content more fun and themed.

Emily  9:10

On camping day they may do their silent reading in a makeshift tent around their desk, or their phonics practice might be rocket ship themed on Space Day. But silent reading and phonics practice aren’t new.

Heidi  9:21

Keeping a portion of your theme day activities rooted in the routines that you already have, will help keep the day from tipping too far into novelty and overwhelm and will also prevent you from having to do a lot of extra planning.

Emily  9:35

Now what theme should you do? There are so many fun themes you could do for theme day.

Heidi  9:41

Truly if there is an interest you have there are probably ideas out there for using it as a theme day.

Emily  9:48

So let’s talk about some of the theme days we’ve done in the past. One of our favorites and one of the most popular ones I’ve seen around is the camping theme. We call ours camp learned a lot.

Heidi  9:59

And then another one that we love is quiet as a mouse day. I don’t know if that’s as popular. But it should be because the kids can’t talk all day long. It is blissful.

Emily  10:09

And the kids really get a kick out of it. It’s such a fun challenge for them. I love that theme. Other fun themes are space, circus, ice cream, boot camp, Safari, chocolate, farm, chef, pirates, detective, the floor is lava. I could go on and on, you get the idea, you could do a theme day on literally anything.

Heidi  10:32

Truly, there’s so many to pick from. If this is your first time during theme days, I would set a goal just to do one. Get it all planned and scheduled. And if you still have time and energy after that, you could maybe plan and prep another one.

Emily  10:46

You definitely don’t want to do yourself in by committing to a week of theme days, and then getting overwhelmed with all the planning partially through it.

Heidi  10:55

Yeah, I’ve been there. And if you want to make all of your work stretch a little longer, you can have a whole theme week instead of just one theme day.

Emily  11:03

For sure. Or you could work something out with your teammates, and have everyone plan and prep one theme for the rest of the team. If you’re going that route, just make sure you set clear guidelines ahead of time so everyone knows how much to plan. For example, make a 12 page work packet, plan a math activity, plan a stem activity for small groups, gather books from the library, etc.

Heidi  11:24

If you are looking to plan your own theme day, we have three tried and true tips to help you. Tip number one is use books. We love reading multiple picture books through our class each day. So picking books for your theme day will make that simple practice feel extra special. Plus reading to your students is a simple time filler.

Heidi  11:45

We like to use the books to introduce the different activities that we do throughout the day. And if we have a lot of books on that topic, we sometimes put them out for individual reading time as well. Or we could put them into a center for rotation. Utilize the library if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on new books.

Emily  12:03

Although I’m always looking for an excuse to buy books. Let’s be honest.

Heidi  12:07

And if you want to use this theme day again, it’s maybe just handy to have what you need all ready to go.

Emily  12:12

Yes, but of course the library is a great option too. Okay, Emily, what is tip number two? Tip number two is to use a work packet. That is a great way to ensure you’re still meeting learning goals during your theme days. And they can help your students avoid overwhelmed by having a fun packet of activities to work through on their own at their desk.

Emily  12:33

If you do use a work packet, we recommend copying your work pages at 50%. So you can fit four work pages on one sheet of paper. And in our experience, most kids can handle working in the smaller space just fine. I know work packet does not sound like tons of fun, but in our experience, the kids really enjoy them.

Heidi  12:52

Yeah, throw a word search in there and they’ll think it’s a party. Yeah. And if you are going to reduce the pages, just remember you need a multiple of four. So you don’t end up with a random blank page. So to do 8, 12 16 is you go 20 if you’re really into it.

Emily  13:06

Yeah, well, if you’re going to stretch it out all week, you’d want one of those longer paths.

Heidi  13:10

Yeah, think about how long you need to fill. And that brings us to tip number three, which is to incorporate review. This is another way to meet your learning goals on a theme day. Your students have learned so many amazing things this year. And we want to keep all of that knowledge top of mind. So it gets solidified in those cute little brains before heading off for summer vacation.

Emily  13:31

And if you want to do some easy theme days without a lot of prep, we have you covered. We created two theme days that we call DLITE days because we are a sucker for an acronym that no one understands except us. DLITE stands for differentiated learning and integrated theme experience. Or you could just call it a theme day.

Heidi  13:56

But DLITE they have such a nice ring to it as they are a delight. The theme days we currently have available are for camping and space. Maybe you already got the space theme for Leap Day.

Emily  14:07

That’s right. If you have the Leap Day Resource, it also included the DLITE version of some of the same activity. So that was a two for one if you bought that.

Heidi  14:18

And each of our theme days are designed to be little to no prep. So you can put these together without a lot of stress.

Emily  14:25

Our theme day sets include a differentiated work packet so you can pick the level of difficulty you want to use for the included math and ELA practice pages. And of course, the packet includes some just for fun pages too.

Heidi  14:39

Next we include a whole class review game that reinforces the topics that are covered in the work packet. So you’re getting that double review there. First Space Day, it’s a fun moonrock activity where the questions are on paper that we crumbled up like moon rocks, and they can pick a rock from the floor to answer it and then toss it back.

Emily  14:59

Then we’ve got themed writing activities like campfire story writing, themed differentiated close reading passages, themed brain breaks and more.

Heidi  15:10

We designed these bundles with you in mind to make your theme days easy and memorable. We will link to our camping and space themed days, our DLITE days, in the show notes.

Emily  15:21

We also have a free theme day planning guide you can use to plan for any theme you want to do. We’ll link to that in the show notes as well. We’d love to hear what theme days you like to do. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily  15:38

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is use your work packet as a fast finisher. Tell us more about that, Heidi.

Heidi  15:53

Whenever you do something that is outside your normal classroom routine, you don’t have a way to know if kids will race through it, or if the opposite will be the problem and it will take three times as long as you’re expecting. To take some of the pressure off of your theme day, plan a fast finisher for your activities. And the easiest way to do that is to rely on the work packet that you’re already making.

Heidi  16:17

The way to make this work is to make your packet longer than your kids can do in one sitting. Add in a few just for fun pages like a maze or a word search to keep the interest up and then schedule some time in the morning for working on the packet. Then, as you go through the rest of the day have the kids keep their packets on their desks. If they finish early with an activity, they can just return to working on the pages. It’s easy peasy. I found like 12 pages to 16 pages is really kind of ideal to keep them busy.

Emily  16:47

A bonus of work packet time is that it gives you teacher work time. If you have to catch up on your grading or start packing up cupboards or any other end of your tasks, this buys you a little time to get started on that. Better to do it while you’re on the clock then have to sacrifice your own time for work tasks.

Heidi  17:06

Oh, any day of the week for sure.

Heidi  17:10

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Emily  17:15

I’m giving extra credit to the New York Times word game Strand. Yes. So it’s a new game from them that they’re just testing out. I do really love it a slash hate it. Last night, I was really hating it.

Heidi  17:32

I think it broke us a little bit inside.

Emily  17:34

It’s basically like a little word search but you don’t know what you’re searching for. They give you a very vague hint about the theme. And that’s it. It is such a vague hint, you need to use every letter on the board to find all the linked words plus the hidden theme name. It is a challenge but it is so satisfying when you figure it out.

Emily  17:56

We are total New York Times word game addicts at this point, because we play Woordle, Connection, Strands and the mini crossword every day. And Strands definitely takes the longest to play usually totally kicked my butt yesterday. If you try out this game come tell us what you think in the teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi  18:19

And I just realized like haven’t played the mini today. And I bet it’s already switched over to tomorrow, so

Emily  18:24

Oh, I know it turns over on an at an awkward time. That’s why I started paying for the subscription. It’s like 2.99 a month and then you can play all the old mini crosswords so it’s good to know. Yes, worth considering if you’re into your word games. We’re in our word game and puzzle era. Apparently I am.

Heidi  18:43

I guess that’s what happens is you’re about to turn 40 Emily.

Emily  18:46

Shut your mouth.

Heidi  18:48

Yeah, we won’t talk about my birthday.

Emily  18:51

That’s true. No matter how old I get you will always be older. So what are you giving extra credit to this week Heidi?

Heidi  18:58

Well, my extra credit goes to the season of Resident Alien that just wrapped up. I know I’ve heard about the show before. But it makes me laugh every week is just so consistently funny. It is a sci fi show about an alien who comes to destroy the Earth and ends up taking over as the town doctor happens. It’s really more like a small town comedy than a sci fi story. If sci fi isn’t your fav.

Heidi  19:26

My favorite characters are the sheriff. He’s so terrible. I love him so much. And if he can you talk about him without laughing the sheriff and Deputy live. They just say the most ridiculous things with just the straightest deadpan delivery. They deserve all the Emmys. I don’t think it’s ever been nominated, but it should be. If you already watch it, please come talking about it in the Facebook group because Emily won’t watch it and I need to tell you about it.

Emily  19:51

I didn’t say I won’t watch it. I think I will watch it so that I finally know what you’re talking. Plus I’m I need a new show because I’m finished. didn’t go up all the things that I’ve been watching, which is the worst.

Heidi  20:03

We’re of headed into that slow show season. But come talking about it in the Facebook group so we can catch up.

Heidi  20:11

That is it for today’s episode, give theme days a try this year. And don’t forget our tip to maximize your work packet as a fast finisher.