School and the City

I was inspired by Cult of Pedagogy to keep my classroom a rigorous, engaging, meaningful classroom environment EVEN on the last week of school. We usually do theme days during the last week. I stuck with the idea of theme days, but put a little more effort into them so that students' time was valued AND I was still able to wrk on packing up my classroom. One of our theme days was Art Day , and I think it was one of my favorites!! I decided to do the most structured activity first before students got too fatigued. This is a project that third grade has done for years, so I adopted it from my wonderful teammates! First, students trace their hand. I modeled to show them how I wanted it to look so that their hand and wrist took up a large amount of space on the page. Next, students created a border of some kind. Then, they decorated the border and their hand. Some designs were realistic, while others were more abstract. Last, they filled in the white space with writing all...

I did it! I survived my fifth year teaching, and I can genuinely say that I did my best to make every last moment count. I was totally inspired (and convicted) by The Cult of Pedagogy's article about the last week of school: What To Do On Lame Duck School Days . In her post, Jennifer provides a categorized list of low-prep, medium-prep, and high-prep ideas for the last week of school, standardized testing days, or really any time that you are tempted to show a movie. Of course, videos have their time and place. And the last day of school - at my school at least - is always "movie day." Jennifer's article got me thinking: How can I do better? I wanted my students to feel challenged - even on the last day of school - and get excited about learning something new. I wanted them to put into practice all of those skills they mastered throughout the year one last time before the potential summer slide. I wanted my students to have something meaningful to say when th...