Can’t Miss Classic: 10 End-of-Year Celebration Ideas Your Students Will Love [Episode 258]

Heidi 0:00
This is episode 257 of Teacher Approved.

Heidi 0:00
This is episode 258 of Teacher Approved.

Emily 0:04
Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. As we move further into May, it’s starting to feel real. The end of the school year is right around the corner, and so that’s why we are bringing back one of our favorite episodes, all about end of Year celebrations.

Heidi 0:18
This isn’t just about filling time or throwing a party. It’s about helping your class feel closure and ending the year on purpose instead of just sliding into summer. This episode will give you practical ideas and a clear way to think about celebrations so they work for you and your students.

Emily 0:36
And what’s extra fun is that these ideas come from you, our listeners. So whether you’re planning something big, keeping it simple, or still not sure what your end of year will look like, this is a great place to start.

Heidi 0:47
Let’s get into it.

Heidi 0:50
You’re listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I’m Heidi.

Emily 0:58
And I’m Emily. We’re the creators behind Second Story Window, where we give research-based and teacher approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

Heidi 1:13
We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

Emily 1:20
Let’s talk about this week’s resource of the week, our summer review packets. Over the years, we have often been asked which grade level of our spiral review morning work would work best for students to practice with during the summer. So we decided it was time to make a dedicated summer review packet.

Heidi 1:38
Unlike a lot of other summer review packets you may see around the internet that contain a bunch of different types of worksheets, ours is a carefully designed review that packs in as much practice as possible on each page. The questions follow a pattern, so students will be familiar with the weekly activities quickly.

Emily 1:57
Each grade level has the same format as the morning work for that grade level, so it’s the perfect practice for your students if they’ve already been doing the morning work with you. But it’s also designed to work as a standalone resource for students who have never done any of our morning work.

Heidi 2:13
Each packet contains 50 pages of math and ELA spiral review, which is 10 weeks worth of content. And of course, we include an answer key as well.

Emily 2:24
While these pages are perfect for a summer review, they also make a wonderful end of your cumulative review in class. You can find our summer packets at secondstorywindow.net/summerpackets, and the link will be in our show notes.

Heidi 2:39
I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but here in the US, the end of the school year is almost upon us.

Emily 2:45
Well, unless you teach year round.

Heidi 2:47
Year round teachers, you have our condolences.

Emily 2:50
So that brings us to the topic of, how do you end a school year?

Heidi 2:55
We put so much, so much thought and energy into starting the school year, but I think we are all running on fumes by the end. There is just not much time or energy left to close out the year. You maybe have noticed this, but we still want it to matter.

Emily 3:14
I think if 2020, taught us anything, it’s that ending, well, matters. That abrupt ending we had that year just really stung.

Heidi 3:23
And it still stings, if I’m being honest.

Emily 3:25
That was rough for us.

Heidi 3:27
Our little preschoolers went home one day and just never came back.

Emily 3:30
Yeah.

Heidi 3:31
So how do we celebrate in a tangible way the moment that is the end of the school year?

Emily 3:39
Well, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just about choosing something that feels meaningful to you.

Heidi 3:45
Right. So I’d start by asking myself how to acknowledge the community that has grown in my classroom during the year, and then I would look for ways to celebrate those small humans that have just come to take up so much of my heart. And I don’t mean that does sound serious or solemn, even if the end of the year can feel heavy, or not, depending on the year you’ve had. But I think a lot of times the most tangible way to celebrate a shared experience is to have fun together.

Emily 4:14
Right. So with that in mind, we asked the Teacher Approved community to share the ways they celebrate the end of the year, and they offered such engaging suggestions that we want to pass them on to you.

Heidi 4:27
So one activity that was mentioned several times was doing an alphabet countdown. If you aren’t familiar with this, each day during the last few weeks of school, you do a fun activity from A to Z. Lisa shared these suggestions. A is an all about me sheet that they can share with the class. B is sit by a buddy day, I is for ice pops from the teacher. Her countdown lasts for 23 days because she combined some days.

Emily 4:53
Those are such fun ideas, and I love that she keeps it simple. She could have done Baking Beautiful Banana Bread day for B. That’s a ton of commitment to stretch out over 20 plus days.

Heidi 5:05
Yeah, you’re gonna burn out real quick if you feel like you have to make something a big production in order for it to be a celebration. And please note that that comment was directed largely my own go-big-or-go-home tendencies, but Lisa was smart to choose something like sitting by a buddy as a celebration. It’s low effort from the teacher side, but it would be so fun and memorable for the students.

Emily 5:29
Yeah, I love that. I would love to know what other suggestions teachers have for their alphabet countdowns, especially for those trickier letters. If you’ve got a good idea for Q or any other letter, will you come share it in the Teacher Approved Facebook group?

Heidi 5:43
Yeah, I’m really curious to hear other suggestions.

Emily 5:47
But if you don’t want to commit to a 26 day countdown, Dawn has this suggestion. We do a balloon pop the last 10 days, with each balloon containing a card with a special activity, like outdoor chalk day or yoga time.

Heidi 6:00
Yoga! There we go. There’s our Y. And I think the balloon popping would be a definite hit with the kids.

Emily 6:07
Maggie suggested a quieter type of countdown. She says, my class made a paper chain. Each child got one to two strips of paper, enough to make as many links as we needed for the number of days left. On their own slip of paper, they wrote something they have been grateful for at school this year. Each morning, we take one off, and the student who wrote it gets to read it to the class and then hang it on our grateful wall.

Heidi 6:29
I love how thoughtful and reflective that is. It’s such a beautiful way to add meaning to your celebratory countdowns.

Emily 6:36
Besides countdowns, we had several recommendations for end of year theme days.

Heidi 6:41
Lacey says we have theme days for the last eight days. We start with color day, sport, Safari, Hawaiian and tie dye.

Emily 6:49
And Jamie recommends Camp Skeeter, and she typed that all in caps, so you know she really loves it. She says they do gummy worm math, catching insects, scavenger hunts, letters from camp, flag raising, morning exercises, chairs put away, desks organized as cabins, cabin competitions, care packages sent from home. I’m not done, there’s more. A campfire in the center of the classroom, hiking. Bathroom is referred to as the latrine. Lunchroom is the mess hall. The list goes on and on. I have students from years ago now, adults who still talk about how much they loved camp Skeeter.

Heidi 7:24
That sounds like so much fun. I can understand why Jamie’s students remember that. And Emily and I love theme days.

Emily 7:30
Especially camping. That’s the best one.

Heidi 7:33
Theme are just a great way to keep students engaged at the end of the year.

Emily 7:37
As we’ve mentioned before, student engagement depends on that balance between routine and novelty. At the end of the year, routine is tipping way into the boredom side of the balance.

Heidi 7:48
So adding surprise, whether that is through a theme day or other activity, it helps keep things from getting out of control.

Emily 7:56
And a theme day is a great way to add to the surprise and delight that help regular activities feel like novelties, which is like, the secret key to doing a theme day, is that it doesn’t actually have to be that, like, exciting, but when you make it themed, suddenly your normal activities seem spectacular.

Heidi 8:13
Yeah, anything themed feels fun and novel, and that is always going to feel like a celebration, especially at the end of the year.

Emily 8:19
Yeah. We also like theme days because they take some of the pressure off the teacher. In episode seven of our podcast, we said that theme days are a little moment of peace dropped from the teacher saints above.

Heidi 8:31
And I still stand by that. Theme days are nice because you can plan and prep them in advance, and the kids are so engaged that a lot of the management hassles that come at the end of the year just kind of vanish for a while. In my mind, theme days are always kind of paired with the feeling of a big exhale. They just give you a moment to get your feet under you again.

Emily 8:55
Plus, if you give the kids enough independent activities during your theme day, you have time to work on your independent activities like finishing grading or updating cumulative files.

Heidi 9:06
That’s way less fun than what the kids are doing. But like Emily mentioned, episode seven of our podcast is all about theme days. We walk you through the seven steps of planning a successful theme day and share our tips and tricks. So definitely revisit that one. We also have two already-done-for-you theme day resources in our shop.

Emily 9:27
We call them delight days, D, L, I, T, E, which stands for, obviously, Differentiated Learning and Integrated Theme Experience.

Heidi 9:37
We can’t help ourselves around an acronym.

Emily 9:39
Even if no one else appreciates them.

Heidi 9:42
Everyone needs a hobby.

Emily 9:44
Each theme set for first through third grade includes a differentiated packet brain breaks, themed writing activity, task cards, differentiated whole class review activity, a themed closed reading passage and more. We have a space theme and a camping theme for only $5 each, and we’ll link to those in the show notes.

Heidi 10:04
We call our camping day Camp Learn A Lot instead of Camp Skeeter, but you could still apply a lot of Jamie’s camp day suggestions.

Emily 10:12
Chantal’s class has a fort day. She has the kids bring cardboard boxes and blankets and then uses those on the students desks to create awesome forts and read with flashlights.

Heidi 10:22
I have never heard that before, but that sounds like so much fun. I bet that’s something the kids will remember forever.

Emily 10:28
Yeah. Besides camp day and fort day, Melissa recommends a glow day, but if you don’t want to commit to a whole glow day, you could still have a lot of fun with just a glow party.

Heidi 10:38
Yes, Cindy says get donations from families, block windows with black paper, let kids tape the glow sticks on their clothes, turn off the lights and turn on the music when everyone is ready.

Emily 10:50
That would definitely be kid heaven. Another fun idea is board game day. Mindy says she has her kids bring games from home with the stipulation that there are no electronic games. The kids must switch to different games after they finish each one, and the only rule is the child who brings the game must know how to play it and be able to teach it to others. If they bring chess, all players must know how to play already.

Heidi 11:14
Those are the tips of a woman who has survived a game day or two.

Emily 11:17
Yep. And one of my kids had a game day recently, and that was the rule. You can’t bring a game once you know the rules to play it.

Heidi 11:23
Yeah, you got to think ahead to keep these fun celebrations from tipping into overwhelm. But it is worth it to see the kids so delighted.

Emily 11:31
And it is just fun to end the year with all these fun, happy memories. Another party idea comes from Sam, who celebrates everybody’s birthdays at once with a big party for everyone.

Heidi 11:41
I haven’t done a big birthday party before, but if my birthday fell on a school day, I usually did a big un-birthday party for the class, and so we would celebrate my actual birthday and their un birthdays together. But I can see how it would be a really fun end of the year activity to do a whole birthday party with everyone.

Emily 12:00
Yeah, I did it on my birthday too, because sometimes mine would be right at the beginning of the school year, that’s when my birthday is, but I really like it for an end of the year celebration. And that really keeps birthday disruptions to a minimum during the rest of the year, if you just do it all on one day and go all out.

Heidi 12:17
So we are about to the end of our celebration ideas, but I wanted to make sure and share this idea from Cindy. She says, Something I did earlier this year was a drive in movie. I had my lunch lady save big, sturdy boxes for me. I gave students time to work on their cars, then served them popcorn and a juice box and loaded a few Pixar shorts on a YouTube playlist. In all, the movie time was about the last 15 minutes of the day. We had already packed up and then students took their cars home that day. Just FYI, one bus driver would not allow the big boxes, so I had to contact families to come pick them up.

Emily 12:54
Oh boy. Maybe just recycle the cars when you’re done. If you can find a way to store the boxes like Cindy did, that would be such a fun activity. I’m sure the kids had a blast making their cars and then the fun of watching a movie. I wonder if she had to explain what a drive in movie is.

Heidi 13:11
Oh, I’m sure she did. I don’t think there are too many of them left.

Emily 13:13
No, that makes me sad.

Heidi 13:15
Thank you for sharing that, Cindy, and thanks for the heads up about the bus. There are always so many layers of things to think through when you are a teacher.

Emily 13:24
And that’s why we are so appreciative of all the teachers that have shared their ideas. We’ve got a hard job, and it’s so helpful when someone else points out the potholes you might not be aware of yet. So a huge thank you to everyone who shared their tips with us for this week’s episode.

Heidi 13:39
Teachers do a great job of looking out for each other, especially at the end of the year, when we are all just limping toward that finish line.

Emily 13:47
As you work on your end of year plans, we hope we’ve shared some ways to make it a real celebration.

Heidi 13:53
Remember that a celebration doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful. It can absolutely just be about filling time before the end of the school year in a way that doesn’t have everyone pulling their hair out.

Emily 14:04
Yep, those kids have to do something for six hours, and learning about coordinate geometry is probably not the solution to that problem two weeks before the last day of school.

Heidi 14:15
But however you choose to mark the end of the year, we hope you find a way to do it that is meaningful to you. Look for tangible ways you can honor the magic of what has happened the past nine months in your classroom, acknowledge the upcoming transition and celebrate the bonds of your classroom community.

Emily 14:34
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how to add celebration to the end of the school year. Please come join the conversation in our Teacher Approved Facebook group.

Emily 14:43
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 make a display reflecting on this year and anticipating the year to come.

Heidi 14:57
So one way that I celebrated the end of the year as a second grade teacher was having the kids reflect on what we had done as a class. I started with a discussion about everything we had done during the year, and I listed the kids memories on the board. I kept going until we had a pretty long list, and then I drew names and let each student pick a memory. I didn’t want anyone to get stuck with a lame memory, like the day the cafeteria ran out of tacos or something like that. So I made sure that our list of memories was longer than we actually needed, and that meant coming up with like 30 or so memories, which took some thinking, but we got there.

Heidi 15:36
Then once the kids had their assigned memory, their job was to illustrate it and then maybe write a sentence about it. At the very least, they needed to title it so I knew what the picture was. Sometimes, you know how kids drawings are, a little abstract. And then I arranged them in chronological order and hung them in the hall as a timeline. Because I knew where I was going to display this, I measured the wall ahead of time and then cut down paper so that they would fit in a row on that wall, and then I added the title, Looking Back at Second Grade.

Heidi 16:06
But then I left it up all summer, and before school started in the fall, I just changed out the title to Looking Ahead to Second Grade. This meant that I had something outside my room for back to school all ready to go, and it gave my new batch of second graders an idea of what they could look forward to. And that was fine, and it was so handy to have it done already. But the reason I really loved this was that it meant so much to my former students to see that they still had a place in the story of my class. They would often stop by and talk about what memories were jogged by seeing our pictures.

Emily 16:42
Which is probably especially important at the beginning of the school year, when they’re in a new class that they don’t feel as comfortable yet, to walk down the hall and see those happy memories is just a happiness boost for everyone. If you want to do something like this, you don’t have to display it in the hallway, if that doesn’t work for you, and you don’t have to put it in a chronological row. The idea is that it’s just nice to do something now that will benefit you when life is crazy at back to school time.

Heidi 17:07
I found that the key to making this successful, as I learned the hard way, was to consider what has to happen in your class during the summer. Because I was taping papers on a brick, they just were no match for the humidity of the swamp cooler and the industrial fans that were blowing on the newly cleaned carpets. If the point of doing this is to reduce your workload, you don’t want to have to keep taping things up. So learn from my mistakes and find a way to make it sturdy enough to survive three months.

Emily 17:41
I wonder if you could put out a big piece of butcher paper and tape everything to the butcher paper, and then you could take it down easily and put it back up easily.

Heidi 17:48
Oh, handy dandy. You could probably even glue it on the butcher paper and then be even more solid.

Emily 17:52
Yeah. Or you could cover it with butcher paper, like somebody had suggested to us recently about covering up your bulletin boards at the end of the year. For next year, you cover them with butcher paper. But I still think the things inside the butcher paper might fall with the humidity. So I think doing it on butcher paper, you take it down, roll it up, and then put it back up.

Heidi 18:11
Or someplace where you could use push pins. We are going to problem solve this for y’all.

Emily 18:15
Yes, I do think it’s such a fun idea, though, and if you do this, we would love to hear about it.

Heidi 18:20
Yeah, or send pictures. Please send pictures.

Emily 18:22
Yes.

Heidi 18:24
To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what are you giving extra credit to?

Emily 18:30
I’m giving extra credit to the book Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez. I gave extra credit last year to another one of her books, Part of Your World, and this is actually the second book in that series, but that just means there are some of the same characters in both books. They’re definitely standalone stories that you can read in any order. In Yours Truly, you get a little bit of everything. There’s enemies to lovers, fake dating, epistolary romance, though, I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling it that, when they only exchange letters for like, a small portion of the book. But I keep hearing this book described as that, so I threw that in too.

Emily 19:06
Somehow it all comes together well. I don’t know how, but she nailed it. I listened to the audiobook, which was fun because there are dual narrators, which I love, and the male narrator is my favorite male audiobook narrator ever, Zach Weber. If you like Emily Henry, I think you’ll enjoy this book. It’s not a flawless book. There are some things about it I would change, but overall, excellent read that I just zipped through. And I know everybody loves Emily Henry right now, and I do too, but I think Abby Jimenez might be my most favorite author in the adult romance genre right now.

Heidi 19:38
Well, I will have to check that out. I’m way behind. It’s been on my to be read for a long time. So

Emily 19:43
Come on.

Heidi 19:44
Gotta catch up.

Emily 19:44
What is your extra credit going to?

Heidi 19:46
I’m giving extra credit to a book too. It is Jane and Edward by Melody Edwards. Not confusing at all to have those double Edwards there, but we’ll figure it out. So Jane Eyre is my favorite book, and I’m such a sucker for any Jane adaptation. And this happens to be a modern retelling, where Jane is a legal secretary and Edward is a high powered attorney, of course, but Melody, I think she did a really good job translating the story into a more modern setting without just a cookie cutter copy and paste of events. She’s faithful to the original while still adding really clever updates. But even if you have never read Jane Eyre, I think you would still enjoy the story as a modern romance, if that’s your jam. If it’s not, I can’t help you. The author also did a really great job at updating the more problematic parts of that storyline.

Emily 20:43
What? In Jane Eyre?

Heidi 20:44
I know! I really enjoyed it and, but I think I would maybe have liked it even more if the author had kept the story in the first person, the way that Jane Eyre is written. I think it would have really boosted the emotional impact of the story, but that’s just a minor quibble in an otherwise very entertaining read.

Emily 21:02
Now the real question is, while you were reading, did you picture Edward as Michael Fassbender?

Heidi 21:08
Yes, I did.

Emily 21:08
Okay, okay, then I will definitely read this book and picture that as well.

Heidi 21:14
I even looked up pictures of him to make sure I had it right.

Emily 21:19
That’s dedication.

Heidi 21:21
That is it for today’s episode. Try out some of these teacher approved ideas for celebrating the end of the school year with your class, and remember our teacher approved tip to make a visual display of your year together with your students.

Emily 21:34
Do you know a teacher friend who may enjoy this episode? Sharing with a friend is the number one way you can help us reach new listeners, and we appreciate it so much.

Heidi 21:45
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 21:49
And I’m Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an episode.

Heidi 21:55
You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. We’ll see you here next week. Bye for now.

Emily 22:02
Bye.