end of year activities

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : May : 17

end of year activities
By Carolyn

I teach fifth grade, and my students are going on to middle school. One thing I had my students do, and I told them it would receive a language arts grade, was to write their memoirs of elementary school. We took their
completed and typed memoirs and placed them into a memory book, along with photocopies of pictures of them that I was able to get of them during their elementary school years. We also took a class picture and made photocopies of it.
Another activity I do is have a math olympics. We have flash cards, estimation activities, competitions (how far they can jump in a standing broad jump,

for instance), etc. I give out awards and prizes for these events. I would imagine that you could even give out gold medals (made of gold foil or paper) to the kids. I am giving out certificates for my student winners.

Another thing I do is have a spelling bee to determine who is the winning speller. I bring maybe five kids to the front of the room, then declare a finalist from that group. The next group comes up, then another group comes up until I have a group of finalists. The finalists compete against each other, and I declare a winner.

We are also going to make up our own wacky awards, following the academic awards that we have on Monday. The students can illustrate these and then "award" them to others.

Another thing we did, and this also went into our memory books, was write something that each student in the class typically said or did all year long. I wrote my examples down on the sheet, then I had them guess: "This student was known to say, 'Do we have to write that?' The kids had fun guessing who I was talking about, and they set out to write, then share their own.

I know another teacher who has her kids write complimentary things about each student in the class.

Another thing I do is have kids work for reading points. Although I have collected the reading books, and it's too late to begin a novel, I have the kids read short books and give them points for book reports and passing tests on them. On the last day, I'll probably award some candy for each ten points earned.

I like the idea of reading with the younger kids during those last days of school. This helps the older kids see how much they have learned, and they love helping the little kids.