What do your lesson plans look like for the last few weeks of the school year? With your end of year activities, are you trying to find ways to assess proficiency and give students the chance to show you everything they learned? Trying to squeeze all of this in can be daunting. Try one (or more) of the end of the year activities below to make the last few days and weeks of school easy, impactful, and fun!
Integrated Performance Assessments
Don’t give a final exam! Instead try an Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs). IPAs are used to assess proficiency in the three modes of communication. By the end of the school year, what proficiency level should your students be at? Novice High? Intermediate Mid? Give them a 3-part assessment to see if they have achieved proficiency in interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational skills.
The best part of an IPA is that it is authentic. It is not like a final exam where students complete fill-in-the-blank vocab or multiple choice grammar. It is based on an authentic scenario in which students can practice using the target language to communicate. For example: You just learned about Hispanic artists. Now, students will take on the role of an art museum director and will be curating the next exhibit. They will read about various Hispanic artists (interpretive), discuss their favorite artists (interpersonal), and announce the next exhibit in a press release (presentational).
You can read about what an IPA is and how to administer it here.
If you are looking for IPAs for various themes and proficiency levels, I have over 30 products to choose from in my TpT store!
Research Projects
Projects are the perfect way to end a school year if you’re looking for some down time. Teachers don’t get extra time to clean up their classrooms, finalize grades, or meet one-on-one with students. When students work on projects, you can get some extra down time to get things done! Plus, you can check in on each student’s individual progress and have student-teacher conferences during this time.
Check out these 8 outside-the-box research project ideas that are fun for you and your students. Ideas include: Instagram profile, Podcast series or episode, research posters, Creating memes, and much more!
Review Games Led by the Students
Trying to review the material from an entire year can be more work for you than reward for the students. So, let’s kill two birds with one stone. They are the ones that need the review… So try this! Break the students up into groups – each group is assigned one of your themes or units from the year. They will create a review game for the class based on content from that unit. This helps them become experts in the assigned unit, as they are the ones creating questions. Then, take a day to play each others’ games. Let them choose if they want to create Jeopardy, Blooket, Quizlet, Trashketball, or another fun game!
End of the Year Feedback Survey
How do you think your school year went? How do your students think your class went? It is so important that we give our students a voice to express how their year went. This gives us insight into making meaningful changes and improvements for the upcoming school year!
Some of my favorite questions to ask students are:
- Which activities helped you learn the most? (Then give options to select – Quizlets, Readings, Group projects, etc.)
- Which was your favorite activity this year, and why? (The why is the keyword! This will give you insight for creating future lessons that students love!)
- What is one piece of advice you would give students taking this course next year? (Then you can use their direct quotes during your first day of school presentations/expectations!)
You can create your own feedback survey or grab this FREEBIE Google Forms version here. You may need to make some edits to fit your course.
Menu Style Project
One of my favorite end of the year projects I ever did was a “menu style project.” It is similar to a choice board because students had to complete one option from each part of the menu. Each section of the menu (appetizer, main course, dessert, beverage, etc.) was a different theme or unit from our course.
For example, in a 7th grade Spanish course, we studied 4 thematic units: School Life, My House, The Market, and Holidays. As an appetizer, students had to choose one activity to demonstrate proficiency in the “School Life” unit. They could either tell me about their three favorite classes or describe what is in their locker. Each assignment was valued at 15 points. I had similar requirements, so students were assessed similarly, but they had choice in the content of their presentation.
Moving on to unit 2: My House. Students could either draw and describe their house or draw and describe their family tree. Again, each was worth 15, and they both required drawing and a specific number of descriptions.
Give one more of these end of year activities a try and let me know how it went with your students!
