Thursday, June 19, 2014

Funtastic End of the Year

Every year, I have students write letters to next year students and grade me on a report card.  I wanted this exciting year to end with a "WOW" so I started my search on TPT (teacherspayteachers.com) for anything that was free.  I found many great ideas.  The first one I used was The Final Countdown.  I used it as a brainstorm for the letter to their locker pal who is the student who gets their locker next year.  I will tape their letters in the lockers before the new students are assigned their lockers.  I had student make a summer bucket list bookmark of all the things they hoped to do in the next two months.

I find that having my students grading me throughout the year and at the end gives me amazing feedback on how to improve next year.  This year I used SurveyMonkey.  I've used this website for years and love it so I don't know why I never thought to use it for this before.  As students wrote their letters, I had students complete the survey using the computer area in my classroom.

On our second to the last day, I decided to do a Minute to Win It competition.  On YouTube, you can get all the blueprints from the show, but I decided to use the written ones from Tonya's Treats for Teachers.  If you use YouTube and you have a Mac, you can download the blueprints and put them all together as one video.  I plan to make this during the summer for next year.  I chose 7 out of 25 games from the written ones.  I was able to get all the supplies for under $30 for four classes.  





All year I've wanted to do a lip sync battle like Jimmy Fallon! I borrowed a microphone and stand from the chorus teacher.  I showed the clip of Jimmy Fallon and Paul Rudd competing. I had students write down their favorite one to two songs so that we had a playlist for the day.  I put the song titles on strips of paper for students to randomly pick out.  I made the playlist using Grooveshark and listened to the songs to double check that they were appropriate for school.



To really get the students pumped, the co-teacher and I battled each other.  We cheated by choosing our songs.  I did Bust a Move by Young MC.  When it came time to bust a move, I danced like Elaine from Seinfield.  The co-teacher did the snowman song from Frozen since she has all the songs memorized thanks to her three-year-old daughter's infatuation with the movie.

As students left at the final dismissal bell of the year, I gave them all one of these to make a "Kool" treat for themselves.

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