FIVE End-Of-School-Year Online Activities
Are you feeling at a loss for activities to do at the end of the school year? In today’s post, I share five fun ideas for end of school year activities that can be used in an online middle school classroom.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
And so what I thought, was that I would like to put together my own list of a few end of school year online activities that I do with my students.
Hey there everyone! If we haven’t met yet, my name is Danielle Rochford. Welcome to my channel, Rochford On Demand (psst… if you haven’t subscribed yet, you should do that HERE). I am an online grade seven and eight teacher located in Edmonton, AB.
I get to teach all of those core subjects for grade seven and eight as well as a high school photography class.
Recently, I was on YouTube taking a look at some of my subscriptions, which are a lot of teacher vloggers. They are a wonderful group of teachers that have some fantastic ideas, thoughts, and things to share.
One of those teachers, Kate The Sleepy Teacher, had this brilliant idea to do a teacher collaboration where teachers would share their end of school year activities.
As I took a look through the playlist, there were some amazing ideas – things I had never even thought about before. I really appreciated being able to go through the playlist and take a look at what other teachers were doing in their classrooms.
One of the challenges of being a teacher that works online with students is that not everything you do in a traditional classroom setting can translate into the online classroom. So as I was taking a look at all these ideas, I would think to myself, “Oh man, these are wonderful! But I don’t know how I’d be able to do it in my online classes.”
And so I decided that I would like to put together my own list of a few end of school year online activities that I do with my students.
1. Bazinga! Review Game
One activity that I’ve done with my students over the past number of years is called the Bazinga! Review Game. Now this is a game that I found from a teacher blog probably about five or six years ago.
It was meant for a traditional classroom, but what I did was I took the idea and converted it to be able to use in my online classes. Essentially the idea is you have review questions that the kids are answering. Usually you break the kids up into different groups – normally I will do two different groups, but you can do more depending on your class size.
As you are asking review questions, if the team gets the question correct, they get a chance to choose a Bazinga! card. These are random cards that have different consequences, different rewards, and things like that. You don’t know what will show up because it is quite random.
After a correct answer, students choose their card and the consequence or reward is then put into play. These cards can have anything on them from bonus points to trading team members. The only limit is your own imagination.
If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about the game and seeing some of the more finer details on how I run it online, then you can check out my blog post HERE where I describe the game. I even have a FREE DOWNLOAD of the digital version that I created to use in my classes.
2. Kahoot!
Another activity that I really like to do is Kahoot! Let’s be honest, I’m not the only one that likes it. If you’ve ever done Kahoot! in your classroom, you know how much students enjoy it as well. My kids LOVE Kahoot!
At the end of the year, I like to do up a special Kahoot! that’s just for fun entitled, How Well Do You Know Your Teacher? The kids really enjoy that one because it challenges them. How well did they pay attention to some of that off-topic stuff that Ms. R. spoke about in classes throughout the year.
If we have enough time, I also like to do a How Well Do You Know Your Classmates Kahoot! Before I do that, I’ll send out a Google Form with a number of different questions: What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite activity? I then use those responses to put together the Kahoot! to see if they can guess who it is that I’m talking about.
3. Broadcast News Project
This year I’ve done an end of year activity in Language Arts that the kids are just doing a fantastic job with. The project is called Broadcast News and the objective is for groups of students to put together their own news broadcast with different segments like weather, traffic, and fashion.
They have to include all the same types of elements that you would see in a regular news broadcast as well as a commercial where they have to come up with their own product that is unique and then develop a commercial for it.
Students work together to create all those different parts and then put it together as a news broadcast presentation.
4. Story time With Ms. R.
Funny enough, even though my students are in grade seven and grade eight, they actually still really enjoy story time. So another activity that I will sometimes do is a relaxing time where students will bring hot chocolate to class and we’ll settle down to listen to some stories. My kids love that one.
5. Digital Escape Rooms
Now, this final idea, I haven’t actually tried with my students yet so I don’t know how they will respond to it.
UPDATE: My students had a great time with digital escape rooms! If this is an activity you are interested in trying, I’ve created a post all about using Google Forms and Google Slides to create an interactive escape room activity. Check it out here: https://rochfordondemand.com/blog/2019/11/24/google-tools-for-engaging-digital-escape-rooms/
I recently came across this idea of digital escape rooms. I know for next year, that is something that I’m going to try for my classes.
Those are some of the more popular end of year activities that I’ve come across for my online classes. Let’s keep the sharing going.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ACTIVITIES YOU THINK WOULD TRANSLATE WELL INTO AN ONLINE CLASSROOM FOR AN END OF YEAR ACTIVITY?
Let me know in the comments below!
