End of the year practicalities

Hello everyone,

I received an email from a teacher that I thought was worth sharing and commenting on:

"What's your advice on getting through the last 8 weeks in the semester. At this point, I'm feeling SO tired and the students also seem to share my feelings. They seem more antsy and impatient lately, and I'm losing my patience as well. Is it just me or is this what usually happens at this time of the school year?"

I remember a lot from my elementary school days, and what I remember the most from the ends of the years is that it was fun. May and June, for me, were filled with lots of fun activities. I remember very little learning.

By high school, this had changed somewhat, but the feeling and the expectation of fun at the end of the year remained with me. My high school teachers planned culminating activities that engaged me, then hung the threat of not graduating over my head for my senior year.

It's hard to say for sure if my expectations for year end were created by my elementary teachers, or if my elementary teachers simply bowed to reality and planned lots of field trips and fun projects for the end of the year because they knew we wouldn't be up for much else.

I currently think--after more than two decades in the classroom--that my teachers bowed to reality, and the reality is that, late in the year, everyone is tired. All of us but C-track are just entering the long home stretch before the end of the year; the next holiday is more than a month away; our students have firmly adopted whatever habits you've taught them. Things are so firmly established in your classrooms by this time of the year that there is little likelihood of your changing them anything in any extraordinary way.

What you can do is synthesize what you've learned all year. This is a great time to work on those higher level Bloom's skills: application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. You will give them little new knowledge; you can't do more than adjust their comprehension skills. You can, however, assign culminating activities that require them to use the knowledge they've gained.

I consciously tried to plan all my favorite works of literature, or my most engaging literature, at the end of the year. There was more comedy, more adventure, more romance. Much fewer deep, dark thoughts; more entertaining thoughts. I did not introduce any new and difficult concepts. (I introduced new and easy concepts, however.)

I programmed games for review, field trips, student-guided instruction, and final projects.

I did not take time off or give them "kick back days"; I did, however, try to find ways that required them to apply what they had learned, to synthesize it, and to evaluate it.

One activity I found worked really well for my AP students was to give them the opportunity to plan the final six weeks themselves. I required them to work at AP level in a related subject field and conclude with a project that was the equivalent in difficulty to a 10-page research paper. They chose the theme of the closing months; I approved the final projects; and we studied what they wanted to study. It was fun.

It wasn't as fun as the final weeks of the second grade, but it kept me fresh, and either my students took my lead or it kept them fresh, too.

There's no reason why a sprint to the end has to be punishing.

Jeff Combe