Our last week of school was fabulous. It should be! The last week should be a time to finish up all the hard work we've done academically this year, and then we should celebrate all that hard work and the successful end of a hopefully wonderful school year. Here is what our last week looked like.
1. Finish the textbooks and take the final tests. For almost all of our core subjects this meant finishing the last lesson and/or review, taking the chapter or unit test, and for some subjects a final test over the entire textbook. I don't like to go too fast for the students' comprehension, but I have found that if I pace it well from the beginning of the year and check along the way (especially at the end of the quarters) we usually can finish the entire textbook in every subject.
2. Donuts! The day after all the final tests I like to celebrate with donuts.
3. Paint party! I purchased real canvases for this one.
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4. I have my students write a letter to themselves and tell them that I'll mail it to them in five years. This year we wrote about the following:
*a favorite memory
*closest friends
*who they are sitting by
*highlights of this year
*what they think they'll be doing in five years
Here are my letters from my eighth grade class five years ago all ready to be mailed. The students are now around 19 years old.
5. A long recess. They've earned it!
5. An extra field trip. This year we took four field trips plus an extra outing to a large park with an exercise trail which we successfully completed. Then we had a picnic and played several games. We finished the day at Hayloft Ice Cream.
Celebrations for different reasons throughout the year keep school interesting and not boring for the students. Giving them events to look forward to is a good thing.