1. Think about your learning this year

Promoting students’ reflection on their learning process has to be every teacher’s major goal and regular practice over the school year. Still, when you seek students’ reflection at the end of the year, your aim is to get an overall picture of how your students were proceeding along with their learning and gather feedback on what worked and did not work with them (activities, materials, etc).

So, this kind of end-of-year student reflection will help you rethink your previous decisions during the holiday and take a step forward to streamline.

To support students to engage in such a reflective process, you need to provide them with reflective worksheets. Here are two reflective worksheets which you can choose from depending on your students’ grade level.

Worksheet A :

If you’re teaching kindergarten or elementary school students here is your student reflective worksheet. Asking students to reflect on their learning at this level is a bit difficult.

So, your assistance is necessary to guide them throughout the process. To this end, ask students to fill in these reflective worksheets in the classroom and help them out.

How to use it? To start off, write down all your lessons names in chronological order. If it’s possible, use pictures or symbols to refer to each lesson’s content. This will help your students remember them. Then ask students to indicate those lessons they like and don’t like while justifying their answers.

To find out what made students enjoy your lessons, feel embarrassed, or bored (this could be your teaching activities, materials, your attitudes, their peer attitudes, etc.) you need to know about when they experienced such feelings and why. The three last questions can help you achieve this.

Worksheet B :

This worksheet can be used with middle and high school students (also university students). Students will reflect on your teaching content and their goals. (Click here to download it)

To complete this worksheet, they are expected to go over all what they have learned in your course. Therefore, it’s better to assign this as homework and give students enough time to complete it.

Yet, make sure to explain to your students the objective of reflecting on their learning and what they’re expected to do within.

2. Write Memories

This can be an engaging end-of-the-year activity. Ask students to write about those unforgettable events or moments they spent in the classroom.

Asking them to recall and talk about what has left a mark on their learning and induced certain feelings (whether they’re good or bad) can tell you a lot about your students’ personalities, their learning, etc. You’ll also see yourself as ‘the teacher’ through the eyes of your students.

To make this activity more interesting :

• Ask each student to write their memories in the form of a story which will be told in the student’s voice. Each student is going to give his story a name, and present it in class (acting) with the music playing (the story’s name and the type of music selected depend on the student’s experience).

• For students who like writing poems, they can tell about their memories in the form of a poem. Whereas, those who like drawing can draw pictures to describe their memories, and then post them in the classroom. Students will guess what each picture represents. After listening to them, the student who drew it will explain it.

• Another alternative would be asking students to write letters to their friends telling them about their memories and how they spent this school year.

Showing gratitude is an important lesson to teach to our students. Therefore, while writing their memories, ask your students to tell you also about who they are thankful for this year.

3. Tell Future Students

This activity can make students more responsible. They will feel that what they’ve experienced this year is worth learning from for future students and so their support is invaluable. Within this activity, you can :

• Ask students in groups to write a booklet to showcase the learning content of your subject matter as well as the resources, and guidelines to learn it and succeed. Post the best booklet and reward the group who has produced it.

If you’re teaching elementary school students ask them to write a portrait, for instance, of “THE BEST 4th GRADE STUDENT IN MATH”. A good portrait will depict what a 4th-grade student should do to succeed in math.

• Get your students’ pieces of advice. Write this question on the board: what’s the most important advice to give to future students? Each student will write the advice he sees more relevant on a card. After reading them, ask them to stick those cards on your classroom wall poster so that future students can see them.

4. Have some Fun

The end of the school year is also a time to have some fun and enjoy the last weeks we spend with our students. You can use games, quizzes, songs, and various activities to achieve this. Here are some suggestions :

• My Teacher Portrait: Each student will write a portrait describing your personality and attitudes, what you like and don’t like when it comes to students’ learning, besides telling about what learning is like in your classes.

• The Teacher Quiz: Prepare a quiz (a series of simple questions) about what you covered during this semester. Divide students into groups of four and ask them those questions. Give students marks and reward the best group. This activity can help students prepare for exams.

• The Students’ Quiz: Instead of preparing the quiz, you can ask students to do so. In groups, students will address their questions in turn and expect to get the answers. If any group has failed to answer correctly, the group that addressed that question will answer and explain it more. You’ll attribute the mark, in this case, to this group (the one who asked and answered).

• Our Song of the Year: Have you ever thought about creating a song about your subject matter content, your objective and the kind of learning experience your students had in your classroom? Think of doing so, you’ll really enjoy it!

Work with your students to make this song. They can tell you about their experience when they felt excited and enjoyed learning.

Involve all students in singing. The whole group will start introducing your class and subject matter. After that, in groups, students will tell briefly about what they studied in your course, and then talk about their unforgettable moments this year. The whole group can end up thanking you.

• My Best Friend This Year: This can be a book, a device, a website, a learning strategy, a daily routine……whatever object or idea that has helped the student learn and/or feel better about himself.

Within this activity, each student will put that object or simply draw its picture or write its name and put it inside a box. Students will guess what it is. Reward the one who gets it and also allow each student to explain how THIS FRIEND has been useful. By sharing their success, students can learn a lot from each other.

• My Future Summer Plan: Ask your students to think about their future summer plan or how they would like to spend their summer holiday in the future. They need to tell you about which country or place they want to visit and why, the things they want to do there, etc.

To provide you with such information, each student is supposed to do some research. While presenting their future summer plan, students can bring photos or things related to their selected destinations, ask each other, and discuss their choices.

• Students’ Gifts: This activity can support you to build good relationships among students. Students exchange small gifts (school supplies) and encourage each other by sticking encouraging notes on their gifts.

 

These were some engaging activities for the end of the year where students are more likely to get excited and out of control. I hope you’ll find them useful. All the best.