This is episode 195 of Teacher Approved. You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm Heidi.
And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story Window, where we give research based and teacher approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.
We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to the show.
Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're sharing the three keys to ending the school year with heart and intention, and we've got a teacher approved tip for creating your own sense of closure.
Let's start with try it tomorrow, where we share a quick win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily, what is our prompt this week?
This week, try what we call a one spot tidy. Set a timer for just 90 seconds and have your class do a quick cleanup of one small area of your room. You could even have several of them all around the room doing this, and it can just be one drawer, one bookshelf, one supply bin. And the beauty of this approach is that it breaks down end of year cleanup into little manageable chunks that feel doable, even when everyone's energy is rock bottom.
I love that idea. Instead of one massive, crazy cleanup day that is going to leave everyone cranky, you can try planning these micro cleaning moments instead.
The satisfaction of seeing even one small area transformed can be surprisingly motivating for everyone. If you like this idea or anything else we share her on the podcast, would you please make our day by giving us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts? So let's talk about end of the year closure. And I have to say, as I was working on this episode, every time I wrote closure, it made me think of friends when they were like, That's what I call closure.
You gotta snap your phone shut.
Well, if you've been listening for a while, you might remember, and if you do, we're super impressed, that way back in episode 11, we first shared this framework that we're gonna talk about today. And it actually is one of our favorite episodes we've ever done. It's just we completely forgot about it until, like, a week ago. We both came across it when we were looking at podcast episodes, and we're like, Hey, this is a good idea! So we're going to revisit that today, and the three ideas
are reflection, transition and celebration. And guess what? They still hold up as a practical guide for wrapping up the school year with intention and meaning.
If you have been feeling overwhelmed or unsure how to create a real sense of end of the year closure in your classroom, this is the episode for you. Because, you know, May is a lot. You are juggling assemblies, grumpy kids, packing up and finishing grades. It's kind of tempting just to crawl to the finish line.
But if you want the year to feel complete for you and for your students, building in even a few moments of closure can make a big difference, and it doesn't have to be complicated.
Our first key to closing the school year with heart is reflection. These last weeks of the school year are the perfect time to help students pause and recognize just how far they've come since August. Without intentional reflection, that growth easily goes unnoticed or unappreciated, especially by the students themselves.
Yeah, learning happens so gradually that sometimes it's hard to see the transformation until you take a step back and really look.
One of our all time favorite reflection ideas is year mapping. You divide your students into groups, and then you give each group a subject area, like math, reading, science, and they write down everything that they learned in that subject this year, and then you can combine the pages into a giant map of your school year.
Oh, and they'll be so proud to remember all the things they have learned this year. You can also use digital reflections, especially if you teach upper elementary students, you can have them create a my year of growth PowerPoint, where they select examples of their work from throughout the year, and then they can explain how each piece shows their development in a skill, and they can reflect on challenges that
they overcame. And it might surprise you, because students may choose to showcase pieces that aren't their best work, but instead they kind of represent significant turning points in their learning journey. Kids can be surprisingly astute at noticing their own progress if they take the time to really look at it.
And I have found that reflection doesn't always have to be a formal activity. One of my favorite things to do at the end of the school year was during morning work. I would remind the students of how at the beginning of the year, when we would do our morning work, it felt so hard and they felt like they would never be able to do it. And then I have them look back at some of the first pages, because I kept it bound in the
whole year book, so that made this easy. If you don't have it bound, you might have to pull up some beginning pages and show the kids what one of those early pages looks like and how easy it looks to them now. They are just so amazed at how far they've come when it seemed that beginning. Idea that this would be an impossible task.
Yes, I love that, and it's so easy. I think that's why it's so helpful to incorporate reflection throughout those final weeks of the school year, rather than saving it all up for the last day. When we make reflection an ongoing conversation at the end of the year, the students have time to really process how far they have come and all the things they've learned.
And don't forget that as the teacher, you need your reflection to what worked this year. What do you want to repeat? What do you never want to do again? Our free end of year roadmap is a great place to capture all of those thoughts, and we have a link to that free resource in our show notes.
And that naturally leads us to our second key to a meaningful end of year, which is helping students transition to what's next. Transitions are a normal part of life, but they can bring up a lot of mixed emotions for students. Hey, sometimes even for teachers. There's excitement about moving forward, but also anxiety about the unknown. By calling out these transitions directly, we can help students approach them with confidence instead of nervousness.
One transition activity that can be a fun tradition is to do a passing of the torch. Have your current students create welcome packages for next year's class that can include things like advice, sharing their favorite memories of the year, or describing what to expect in your classroom. These are so sweet to read it beginning of next year, and students really love writing them. You can add a twist by having students create short video tours of your classroom
learning centers and explaining how they work. That's just a lot of fun for everyone, and a fun way to fill some of those long last days.
It's such a great way to give kids ownership in the transition process. It's also helpful to demystify the next grade level with like a little preview. So if possible, you can arrange for students to visit next year's classrooms for a quick activity or chat with the teachers.
But even when that is not feasible, you can take your class on a super quiet hallway field trip to peek at those classrooms and get a glimpse of what they are up to. Make sure you point out the fun things that you know is happening in those classrooms, to get your kids excited about their next transition.
That simple connection point can create so much excitement about the transition, and it helps give your students context for what next year will look like for them. Heidi, you had an idea that you liked to do for transition called a looking back looking forward timeline. So tell us about that.
I love doing this. So you start as a class, you brainstorm memorable moments from the past year, then you just list them all on the board, and each student chooses one of those memories to draw and write about. This could be anything memorable to the class, like a favorite read aloud, a fun go noodle activity, a field trip, a memorable math lesson. You'll be surprised at the things they remember and the things that they don't, maybe a little bit disappointed in the things they don't remember.
Yeah, so as the teacher, you might want to come up with a few suggestions ahead of time, because it's likely that they won't be able to generate enough memories on their own.
No, they all get stuck on, you know, Halloween parade and the class party. And if getting one memory per kid is too difficult. You could always partner students to work on this together. So you have the kids draw their memory and a little paper polaroid frame, and you can add a writing page if you want them to write as well. And then you collect these to make an end of the year bulletin board. You print the header that says Looking back at blank grade, and obviously you fill it
in with your grade level. But here's where the handy part comes in. When it's time to start setting up your class in the fall, all you have to do is trade out 'back at' to 'forward to' and now your back to school bulletin board says, looking forward to blank grade. All you had to do is change a couple of words.
And you're not limited to using this as a bulletin board. You could put it on your door or on the wall outside your classroom. Could really put it anywhere you need a back to school display, and if you don't want to leave this up for next year, it's still a really great activity for the end of the school year. Don't be limited by our ideas. If you just like this for a one off activity.
I like to put this in the hall as like a really long timeline, so you could kind of walk through your school year, it was a fun memory. And if you were interested in doing this with your own class, you can find this set in our store. We
will put a link to it in the show notes. It includes the photo frames for students to color and different size writing sheets, plus it has all the bulletin board pieces like a title and some cute border strips, and a teacher guide, where we walk you through everything step by step.
And yes, ideally, this is something you could put up in May and leave up all summer. But some schools aren't cool about that. Why do they want everything off the walls? Seriously, I don't understand why it's so imperative.
They're not scrubbing the walls. Yeah, I don't get it.
But if you are in that boat, we're so sorry. But even if you want to reuse it next year and you have to take it down, you can repost it. Just take a picture of how you had it set up, put it all into a big envelope or a folder, and you'll be good to go for next year.
It's so nice to have a meaningful way to fill some time at the end of the year. But my favorite part of this activity actually happened when school started up again. When I would do this with my own students, I was surprised by how touched my former little kiddos were to see their work still on display, it
helped them feel like they were still part of my class. And I really loved having a way to show them that even though they were getting bigger, they were moving on, they would always be my kids.
I think that's what makes the third key to a meaningful year end so crucial. Celebration doesn't just recognize achievement, it also honors the connections and joy that make our class community special.
Celebration is really at the heart of what we want to do at the end of the school year. This is where we can recognize not just academic achievements, but the whole experience of growing together as a class this year. The goal is to honor individual journeys while also acknowledging the experience that we have all had as a group.
And you don't need elaborate party plans to mark the moment, something as simple as a compliment circle or even a toast with sparkling apple juice in plastic champagne flutes can make a special memory. And something we always love to do is student created awards.
Unlike traditional end of year awards, we want our students to choose what they are most proud of, not what we think they should be proud of, and give them an award for what really matters to them. We have a free resource that will walk you through this whole process, including several cute styles of awards to choose from. And there is a link to that in the show notes.
And we'll link to the episode where we talk about that as well, if you want to deep dive into end of year awards.
Yeah, the show notes are where it's happening in this episode.
It really is. Another idea is to use the power of music to celebrate by creating an end of year playlist with songs that have become meaningful to your class throughout the year. So like the song you always played during cleanup time, or the one you loved for brain breaks and the one that you practiced a million times for the class program. Playing this playlist during your final days together will evoke so many shared memories
and create that wonderful sense of nostalgia. You can even share the playlist with parents so they can keep listening at home.
You can also tap into that nostalgia by revisiting some of your favorite read alouds. Like I don't know about anyone else, but I was always reading to my students, probably multiple times a day, so we had many favorite books that were fun to read again, and it's a fun group discussion to reminisce on all the picture books and the chapter books that we had read during the year.
These are such fun ideas for celebration. But don't forget your support staff. Having students write thank you notes or design small posters for custodians, office staff or specialists, it's a great way to celebrate everyone who made this year possible and impacted your students.
But the final celebration moment that I think every classroom needs is some kind of a closing ritual. This doesn't have to be elaborate, but it should provide some kind of emotional closure to your time together. With my second graders, I ended each week with a closing circle, and that ritual would be really easy to adapt for an end of year activity. You just gather everyone in a circle, and you ask students to share their proudest moment from the year.
You might have to prompt them a little bit about, you know, some ideas, because in the moment, they seem to go blank. Once everyone has an idea, you go around and they get to share with the group, and then you have them think of a wish that they want for next year. They whisper it into their hands. Then, you know, we all close our eyes while we're holding our hands cup together. And then on the count of three, we say our
class cheer, or, you know, we could just count down. And then we let our hands go, and we let our wishes float up into the world where they will be floating around in their new classrooms waiting for them when they come back to school in the fall. It's so simple, but it's just really profoundly meaningful.
I did that a few times too, and it really was just the perfect little period on the end of the school year. A good way to get teary.
Oh yes, definitely.
When you incorporate these three keys, reflection, transition, and celebration into your end of year plans, you transform those final weeks from a countdown to a meaningful conclusion. Your students will leave your classroom not just with their report cards and summer reading lists, but with a deeper understanding of their own growth and a sense of anticipation for what's coming next.
And something you should start anticipating is our upcoming teacher summer talks event happening in mid June. This is a free audio summit with lots of back to school strategies from experienced teachers designed to fit into your summer schedule without requiring you to sit in front of a screen for hours during your summer.
We'll be sharing more details about that soon, but in the meantime, we'd love to hear what your class will be doing to end the school year in a meaningful way. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group. Now for our teacher approved Tip of the Week, where we share an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and simplify the rest. This week's teacher approved tip is create
teacher closure too. In all your planning for student closure, don't forget that you need meaningful endings as well. Taking time to process your own journey through the school year is essential for your professional growth and your emotional well being.
And surprise, our end of year roadmap is the perfect free resource to help you do this. You can reflect on the teaching strategies that really worked well this year, challenges you navigated and personal growth that you experienced as a teacher. And it's just all an easy to use handy dandy digital format that you can just pull up wherever you need it.
If you haven't downloaded the free end of your roadmap yet, what are you waiting for? The link is in the show notes.
To wrap up the show. We're sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?
I'm giving extra credit to my new collapsible laundry baskets. Ooh, fancy. They are from clever made and I got them on Amazon, and they come in a set of two, which is great, because you always need more laundry baskets. But the key is
they fold totally flat when you're not using them. And I have tried other collapsible laundry baskets before, and they are either too flimsy, so that once you get the laundry in there, they kind of fall apart, or they're too bulky when you collapse them, you know, like those, like silicone ones, that you collapse and they're still, like, three or four inches tall. No, this is, like, basically flat when you collapse it and it
stays collapsed. It's so good. This is, like, the perfect Goldilocks laundry basket.
I'm wondering, I'm just thinking of, like, teachers who are gonna have to be hauling stuff home for the summer that they might need to work with. Do you think that would be like, that would work for transporting, like, big, you know, teacher manuals and books and stuff?
Maybe. I mean, it's pretty sturdy because it holds, like, it's got a, like, solid, solid bottom, and then the top is made of, like, a steel frame, and then it's got, like, really sturdy, like, a pop up brace that pops up on the sides when you want it up. So I think it could. I think it could. You might want to be careful about, like, carrying it, I don't know. You'd have to test out how much weight it could hold, so you
don't bust them. Like a reusable shopping bag is not as sturdy, but less expensive if they bust, so you'd have to weigh out and decide which things go in what kind of container.
It could be nice. So if they fold flat, you could just, like, tuck it in your cupboard over the rest of the year and just pull it out every May or June. It can be real handy. Well, experiment and see.
Yes, let us know, people. What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?
My extra credit goes to Matt Swack on Instagram, and it's Matt, M, A, T, T, with an underscore, Swack, S, W, A, C, K, and I'll put a link in the show notes. But his account on Instagram is just full of beautiful drone shots of nature. There's just waterfalls and beautiful trickling streams and lush green trees, and it's just gorgeous. Not a lot of the landscape that we have around here, so it's lovely to see, and
it's so calming. His account is one of my favorite ones to watch at the end of the day to unwind, so if you need a little breather, check out Matt Swack Instagram, 10 stars. So good. That's it for today's episode. Remember our three keys to closing the school year with heart and intention—reflection, transition and celebration.
And don't forget to download our free end of your roadmap where you will find everything from reflection prompts to task checklists to set you up for success as you transition from school year to summer.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.
And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an episode.
You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week. Bye for now.
Bye.