For one year you’ve been running down the treadmill of class prep, struggling to come up with the best ideas to keep your students’ engaged. 2022 has been a tough year for us all. Maybe the whole idea of being mindful and intentional in class ended up like another pointless recommendation left on some specialist’s social media wall. As we all get ready for vacation and for starting 2023, it is a perfect time for reflective end of the year activities that will help out students think in a deeper manner about their lives.
Types of end of the year activities
As you prepare for the vacation, students start getting excited and often do not have that attention span needed in class. Moreover, Their thoughts are all over the place and it is difficult to keep them focused on heavy duty learning. However, you can harness all this excitement by offering reflective end of the year activities that are out of the box and that help them be grateful for the year that has passed.
In my class, I try to combine the creative writing tasks with imaginative, mindful activities, fun crafts and unexpected challenges. Take a look at the playlist of end of the year activities that I use this year:
- My Best Year Ever – reflective writing
- Grateful For The Past – mindfulness writing
- End of Year Interview – creative writing
- Letter To My Future Self – creative writing
- End of Year Notes – mindfulness writing
- Next Year’s Planner – goal setting
- Look And Write – narrative picture prompts
- End of the Year Idioms – vocabulary inspired writing prompts
- New Year, New Me – word search grid
- The Wishing Tree – reflective brainstorming
- My Class T-Shirt – fun craft
- Thinking Caps – reflective critical thinking
- End of the Year Speech – inspirational writing and speaking
- End of the Year English Fun Trivia – research game
- End of the Year Scavenger Hunt – classmates connection challenge
Being intentional matters
The end of the year templates and activities are easy to share and require almost no prep so you can use them in any format you want, which means saving precious time before the winter break. Thus, being intentional about reflecting on the past year is not difficult at all.
Because these middle school end of the year activities focus on goal writing, self-discovery, introspection, social emotional learning and personal response, you can have a meaningful reflective time. Therefore, your students will be motivated and engaged to give their best in the months to come.
The catchy challenges and interactive end of the year prompts will help you evaluate the students’ ELA skills. Moreover, the activities can be done without putting any pressure on them so you will have an accurate picture of the places where they need intervention.
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