End of the Year Closure Ideas

It is hard to believe that we have already been out of school for almost a month, and tomorrow is the officially half way point for our four-week summer school. Each year I have closure planned, but often times the rush to wrap up loose ends makes it hard to complete all of the components on the final days that I would like to ideally. Also, the end of the year always seems to sneak up. Even though I know it is coming, it always seems surreal when it actually arrives.

Recently, I have enjoyed seeing what other teachers do for the end of the year, and I am taking notes for next year to make sure that I start planning well in advance for a better sense of closure as a classroom community, rather than just completing all of our academic projects.

At the end of this year I was reflecting on how extremely lucky I am to be in a school with such supportive families. I have really appreciated all of the interactions with families. I love how Stella writes a thank you letter to her families and gave them a DVD picture slideshow this year. My daughter's teacher did that this year for kindergarten graduation and gave each family a copy. As a parent I loved that gift, and would like to do something similar for my families next year.

On the student side, I love how Stacey writes a personalized note to her students in response to their end of the year reflections, making sure to include a hope and dream for each of her students. In the article that Stacey wrote for the Responsive Classroom newsletter and linked in her blog post, she mentions, "When I sat down to write them, I realized that I knew some of my students better than others. Some were easy to write for, but others were a bit of a struggle, even though I’d been with them for a year. So this project also helped me set a new goal for myself—to spend more time throughout the upcoming year focusing on each of my students as individuals." This is a good reminder for every teacher to take the time throughout the school year to reflect on making sure that he/she has made a good connection with each student, and something that I will improve on next year as well.