For many, Memorial Day weekend signifies the home stretch. Testing is over. Field trips, concerts, art shows, field days,
book inventories, etc. all signal the
gradual shut down of the schools and with it the minds of our students. Add to that the heat that can come in June
(along with schools that are not air conditioned) and you can run up against
some cantankerous kids.
Back in the day, we collected their books and kids did
puzzles on paper. They thought that was a
treat, until they got their 7th one of the day. When
the VCR made it into the schools, we might even had showed a movie! But alas, our students are more sophisticated
than that now (and they have seen all the movies!).
How do you keep them going?
Thanks to my twitter PLN, I have come across a few great
resources to help you get to the end of the year with your sanity intact:
1. 8 Digital Ways to Wrap up your School Year
– includes some simple tools that can help you digitize your end of the year
activities.
As the end of the year gets closer, sometimes technology becomes
less available either because of high demand or disrepair, bringing low tech
resources and activities to the forefront.
2. “How
to Rejuvenate Yourself and Your Students after Testiing” by Elena Aguilar has
some great ideas on incorporating creativity with engaging activities. I have to tell you that I personally am a big
fan of crayons, markers and scissors. I
think you will find your students are too!
Kids bouncing off the walls?
Why not use some of that physical energy by incorporating movement into
your lessons
3. “Just Drop It,” has students examining the correlation between the height a ball is
dropped from and the height that it bounces back to, the link gives you the complete
procedure and all the science information you will need to make a great
learning activity.
Do you have your box ‘o fun from this blog “10
Simple Activities for Hands and Minds”?
4. Have students
build a Rube Goldberg contraption. Watch
this video by Honda (it’s real, no
trick photography) to give you a little inspiration! Start by telling your
students to build a three step contraption that will get a marble in a cup.
Came across these great activities for ELL kids, but why
should they have all the fun? Check out
some of these activities for building vocabulary.
5. Wacky
Story- a great game to help students reinforce the vocabulary that they have
learned throughout the year.
6. Word
Links- Assign your students each a word and have them find a partner whose
word is related). They can search for opposites;
one does something to the other, etc. Have them report out what their words are
and how they are related.
There are lots of other great blogs and sites that have even
more ideas. Whenever you are looking for
resources in education you can always turn to Cybraryman. Check
out Jerry Blumengarten’s (Cybraryman) resource page for more links. Or you could even check out this previously
posted “Keep
on Teaching: Great End of the Year
Activities.”
Experienced and connected teachers have all sorts of
resources and activities up their sleeves for just these times. Why not share yours?
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