Interesting and Motivating End of the Year Lessons
Motivating end of year activities which can help social studies teachers make their last few lessons have an impact.
By Marie Carney Hossfeld
It's that time again. The end of the school year is upon us. There's all sorts of energy in a classroom, and trying to channel it into the right direction can be near impossible. It's a tough task to get much out of those last few weeks of school. A teacher has to make a choice at this point, to go with the regular routine and get nothing done, or to try to find captivating end of the year activities that can get the attention of their audience.
Nothing seems to get a group of students motivated more than a little competition. Classes can hold a "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" type of competition to review key concepts learned during the year. After you have specified a topic, you can have teams study together and make test questions. You should allow each student to take a turn as the contestant, with team members as their support group. Each student can answer seven questions. Once everyone has had a turn, you can add the team scores together, and give each student an individual and team grade. This activity may take a day, or can be done for weeks.
If you don't want to focus an activitiy on curriculum topics, you can have students do something that takes into account their overwhelming obsession with summer vacation. You can have students plan their dream holiday. Their trip should last for at least a week. They should develop a travel map, create a budget, and plan at least three cultural activities. These can be anything from visiting museums, going to plays, or exploring great-grandma's first town in the United States. They can visit graveyards, courtrooms or the largest ball of twine as long as it fits in their itinerary and budget.
Getting an evaluation of your teaching can help reinforce some of your more powerful lessons, and let you know what you've done that's made an impact. You can ask students to answer two questions: What's the one thing that happened in this class that you'll never forget and what lesson does it relate to? What was the most important thing that you've learned in this class and why is it such vital knowledge? You can have the class sit in a circle and discuss these questions. Allow students to direct the conversation by using a ball or small stuffed animal to hold while they're talking. They pass the object to the next person when they're done. By having students discuss positive experiences, you can find out what made an impact and what you might need to do differently in future classes.
What follows are some more end of the year lesson plans.
End of the Year Lessons and Activities:
This lesson has elementary school students write a letter to the student who'll occupy their desks the next school year, giving him or her a heads up on what to expect. Next, they make a yearbook featuring the best events of the year.
In this lesson students focus on a specific time period - 1988, but it can be adapted for the current year. Students create a “Year in Review” report focusing on recent events that shaped the world from the perspective of how they will affect the world 1000 years from now. Students research areas such as national news, international news, science, and sports looking for historical significance. Students create posters and present their findings. There are also compelling tie in activities that can extend the unit.
This lesson utilizes a multi-media approach to involve eighth-graders in a project in which they create a video timeline to summarize a year. While captivating, this ambitious lesson may be more time intensive than practical for many classroom situations.