We are in the home stretch with only a few days of school remaining before the winter break. Energy runs high and attention wanes rapidly in the days before a holiday. How can you keep students actively engaged in learning that meets curricular targets and achievement standards? Here are a few ideas.
1. Use games
Students love games. Word games such as Scrabble and Boggle, Crossword puzzles and even Bingo offer opportunities for vocabulary review or spelling practice. Consider practicing math skills with card games or Cribbage. Twenty-first century skills such as inductive and deductive reasoning, creative problem solving and logic are developed through games such as Clue, Battleship and Chess.
2. Write a play
Students love to perform in plays. Let students review language arts, science or social studies concepts by working in small groups to write and act out a play. Parts of a cell? The water cycle? Continental Congress? Adverbs? Let students bring them to life with an original play or skit.
3. Create a puppet show
Younger students love puppets. Let them work with a partner or small group to choose a favorite story from their reading to enact with puppets. In addition to recall, comprehension, and vocabulary they will use higher level thinking skills such as summarizing, evaluating, and synthesizing as they choose which parts to act out and how to perform their story.
4. Write New Year’s Letters
As the year winds down, teach students the art of letter writing by having them write New Year’s letters. They can express gratitude, share insights about the best things in the past year or their hopes for the new year. The school janitor would love a letter of thanks, as would the bus driver, the secretary and anyone else who works in a school! Make it meaningful by actually sending the letters.
5. Repurpose songs
A favorite activity of younger and older students is to review content and concepts by working in small groups to rewrite the words of a favorite song to incorporate ideas from the curriculum. We remember a high school group’s rousing version of Queen’s We are the Champions re-purposed to teach Mitosis, and a sixth grade version of the Sponge Bob theme song to teach about Ferdinand Magellan.
6. Practice goal setting
End the year on a high note by setting students up for success in the new year. Practice goal setting by having students determine their goals for the next year or even the next five or ten years. Then have them break down each goal into actionable to-do items. Not only are they practicing a valuable life skill, they are connecting their dreams for themselves to the things they must do in order to achieve those dreams. This can be very motivational and help students see the purpose for the work they do in school every day.
The days before a school break don’t have to be exhausting. With a little imagination, they can be fun and inspiring.
How do you keep students engaged in learning before a break? Do you incorporate special, fun activities? We would love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
Happy holidays,
These are fantastic ideas! In my experience, teachers keep plugging away with the regular stuff, trying to cram in as much of it as possible before school closes. I bet these ideas would be more effective.
Hi Leslie, you are right in that many teachers feel a lot of pressure to cram in as much as possible. It is not a particularly sound educational strategy. Many times, depth, rather than skimming over much content quickly results in better learning. Children will also learn more when they are having fun and engaged, but that often takes time and so the paper/pencil tasks take over.