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10 Ways to10 Ways toEnd the SchoolEnd the SchoolYear with JoyYear with Joy 22-23 Inspired Teaching Institutes:USING IMPROV TO GROW RESILIENCEwww.inspiredteaching.org 5614 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 258, WDC 20015Copyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 2023CONTENTSIntroduction...............................................................2 Move...........................................................................3 Change up the space...............................................3 Practice debate.........................................................4 Leave something behind.........................................5 Seek advice................................................................5 Create a classroom compilation............................6 Let students be the teacher...................................7 Produce a media project.........................................8 Create and play a game...........................................8 Create a space for sharing......................................9

IntroductionIntroductionIn addition to the activities in this guide, there are four key thingsyou can take advantage of to end the year on a high note.Students are focused on summer and the freedom thatbrings. Prepare them to use that freedom in ways that willenable them to continue to grow.Learn all you can from this class to help you with your next.Use these last weeks to capitalize on these relationships bybuilding MORE school connectedness (something lacking inmany schools right now). These are central to all learning but really the only way youcan hold anyone's attention at this point in the year.1. Relationships you’ve built all year.3. Engagement and Fun2. Autonomy4. Feedback for YouThis resource guide is meant to share engaging strategies for content reviewand help you reflect on end-of-year activitieswith a focus on building school connectedness.www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20232*All of the tools in this resource guide were developedusing the Inspired Teaching approach. Learn more here.

www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 2023Change upChange upthe space.the space.Move...Move...3Let your studentsredesign the room for thelast weeks and see whatthey come with.What are some ways you imaginethey may change the space?One key way to bring joy into the end of the school yearis to look for lots of opportunities to move, and to putstudents in charge. Warm-ups are a great way to implement movement inyour classroom. Hopefully you already incorporate themin your lessons, but do your students lead them? Whatmight happen if they do?Invite different students to come up with up a move byasking, "Who will teach us an exercise move?"After the student demonstrates their move, have therest of the class do it as well.1.2.and let your studentslead the movement!What to Do

Create a May Madness experience with the content you’ve covered as a class.Ask students to identify the MOST important things they have learned in classthis year, and plug their answers into brackets.Working alone or in pairs, have them choose one of the items on the list that theywill defend for its importance. You can have them write a speech, draw a picture,create a list of bullet points, etc.On a chosen day begin having students make their case for their particular topic.In the first round the class votes on which of each bracket pairing is moreimportant based on their case their peers made.The winners of the first round move onto the second tier of the bracket. At thispoint, consider pairing the students who didn’t advance with those who did so thefull class remains engaged. Students prepare a fresh round of arguments (inwhatever form works best for your grade level and subject area) and go head tohead again. The class votes again on the strongest cases and those advance to thenext bracket round.Depending on the size of your class, this process can take several rounds or a few.For the final matchup, you may want to bring in other staff or parents to be thejudges. To keep the full class engaged, consider continuing to pair those who losea particular challenge with the victors so they keep thinking about different facetsof what they learned and practice crafting arguments based on each new pairing. 1.2.3.4.5.What to DoPractice debate!Practice debate!Review learning in a way that really requiresshowing what you know.In the above article, high school teacher (and Inspired Teachingcolleague!) Cosby Hunt describes an AP U.S. history project hedid with students in which he made a list of native-born ornaturalized twentieth century Americans and placed them into abracket—much like the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA) basketball tournaments. The students then debated, head-to-head, which historicalfigures were “more significant” until they arrived at a Final Fourand, eventually, a winner. May Madness! A ClassroomCompetition Merges HistoricalResearch with Public Debate There are severalvariations on this themethat you can find onlineand then adapt to your own content. Here are twoadditional examples:AP Lit March MadnessScience March Madnesswww.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20234

Leave somethingLeave something behind.behind.Seek advice.Seek advice.Of all the swirling thoughts in students’ heads rightnow, returning to school in the fall may not be one ofthem but it can be fun to talk with students about thenext class that will come in their wake.What can they leave behind to create surprise anddelight when students return in the fall? Here are acouple of ideas:Your students know more about what it's like to be in your class than you do—they’ve spent close to 180days learning the ropes! Here are a few ways they can share their wisdom with you:Write a letter to a new student in this class in the fall highlighting what they should look forward toand what they should do to stay on track.Create a movie trailer for this class that can be shown in the fall to let incoming students know whatthey’re in store for.Have students identify all the important facets of what it takes to be successful in your class andwrite, illustrate, or make a video “How To” guide to your class.Gather feedback from students in a survey or individual conferences (if possible) to find out whatworked well and what posed challenges for them this school year. If you work with youngerstudents they may have a harder time articulating this - consider sending a survey to their parents! message rocksseed bombs/surprise garden spotspost it notes in favorite books a welcome bulletin boardpencils with messages on themWhat are you curious to learn from your students?www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20235

Students choose their best writing/drawing from a portfolio from the yearWrite letters to the class sharing a favorite memoryGather favorite recipes into a cookbookBook/movie recommendations“Recipe” for a perfect summer dayCreate a classroomCreate a classroomcompilation.compilation.If you have access to a printer or a padlet, you canhave your class create something together that theyget to take home and remember their class by. Thiscan take many forms, for example: And here's one more idea...Write the numbers of your zipcode down the left-hand side ofthe page. Each numberdetermines the number of words inthat line.Note: if you have a zero in yourzip code, that line is a wild card!You can leave it blank, insert anemoji or symbol, or use anynumber of words between 1 and 9.ZipOdes: a fun new form of poetrywww.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20236

Have students review the content learnedin class and do a deeper dive on some facetof the curriculum they wanted to knowmore about. Have them prepare lessons toteach their peers. Encourage students tomake their lessons interactive to keep theengagement up. Consider hosting Speak Truth sessions inwhich students craft and lead discussionsaround topics they care about. ThisInspired Teaching program has a guidebookcomplete with planning materials. SpeakTruth is great for building speaking andlistening skills, school connectedness, andbecause they are discussing something theycare about, engagement will likely be high!Let students beLet students bethe teacher.the teacher.Now is a great time to step back from leading the class and invite yourstudents to take on the role of teacher! Here are a few examples:Work in small groups to plan a lesson around a concept or skillthey know but their classmates don't. Take a week for students toshare these lessons and learn from each other. For lower gradesparents can come in to help. An activity like this taps into severalspeaking and listening learning standards.www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20237

Produce a mediaProduce a mediaproject.project.Create andCreate andplay a game!play a game!Students consume media all the time - consider usingthe end of the year for them to create their own andthen have a closing celebration where they share theirwork. Here are some ideas:Whether it’s making a board game, a scavenger hunt, a vocabulary-based crossword puzzle, or puttingtogether several puzzles as a class, working collaboratively on a game can be a great way for studentsto connect and have fun - and you can put plenty of learning in there too! Here are some examples:Create a trivia-based board game using key concepts learned in class. Have students organize class Olympics with various events that require knowledge andskills learned in class, i.e. math problem relays where students solve a problem and then run thenext problem to the next person in the race or see how long you can hula hoop while usingvocabulary words learned in class in a sentence.Give students a series of prompts/items that they have to find items on the playground orin the classroom to illustrate—prompts should come from things they learned in class, i.e. aright angle, parallel lines, a verb, an example of a law.Plan and produce a podcast episode (mostcomputers have recording capabilities andthere are free online editing tools). If you have access to Ipads, have studentsrecord their own news show or short videodocumentary about some facet of theschool or your class. With Ipads or even just old phones, havestudents create stop-motion videos. Thereare several free online tools for doing this. www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20238

Themed object sharing (bring in something of a particular color, abook you like, a favorite fruit (make a class fruit salad!), an herbyour family cooks with (pass and share the smells!), a favorite song(make a class playlist).Share a craft—create a class swap with what they've made. Share an old photo—looking at past versions of yourself(particularly in upper grades) can be fun and students can guesswhose photo belongs to whom. Share your favorite location on campus, then take a class tour tovisit these locations. Share your vision for the future - what do you want to be doing atthis time next year?www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 20239Create a spaceCreate a spacefor sharing.for sharing.Sharing is great for buildingspeaking and listening skills, it’s alsoa way to bolster connectedness.Several of these activities offeropportunities for students to sharetheir thinking and their experiences.And you can do lots of variations onthe theme in the weeks ahead.

Take the SurveyWe want your feedback!We want your feedback!If you found this resource useful,please complete a short survey aboutit by clicking the button below.Join us at our nextFAST-PACED,IDEA-RICHInstitute!View UpcomingInstitutesGet #Inspired2Learn!Please visit https://bit.ly/3FUXLYT or scanthe above QR code to access a collection ofready-to-use lessons and activities with full,detailed explanations of each activity andapplicable Common Core Standards to helpyou become an Inspired Teacher!www.inspiredteaching.orgCopyright © Center for Inspired Teaching 202310