End of School Year Innovation
With six weeks of school left, it’s easy for students and
teachers to check out. The weather is nice. The state exams are behind us and
with them a certain sense of urgency.
This time of year can drive a teacher crazy. In many schools
including my own in New York City, students have been cooped up all winter.
With the arrival of warm weather they’re practically vibrating in their seats
with excitement to get outdoors. Many schools in New York City lack access to
sufficient outdoor play space even in the warmer months, which can exacerbate
the “spring fever”.
Even so, this time of year is in some ways my favorite. It’s
when I feel most free to try new things. As much as I despise the business
world jargon that has infected education (full of it’s own idiosyncratic words
to begin with, i.e. differentiation), I do like the idea of teachers as
entrepreneurs. The final weeks of school are a perfect setting for innovation.
Ideally if you try something out now and it works well, you can implement it
from the start come September, with a few tweaks of course.
You might think that switching things up at the end of the
year is a recipe for disaster. Students, especially young elementary aged kids,
thrive within consistency and structure. Why disrupt that when kids are already
struggling to attend to learning?
But innovation doesn’t mean you are removing structure from
your classroom. Rather you are replacing the current structure with a new one.
At a time when kids might be finding the routines and procedures in place since
September tedious, a change of pace can do them good. Furthermore, you can
brainstorm changes within the context of their next grade level. A new
structure might require more independence from students than the beginning of
the school year as part of preparation for the next year.
Is innovating overly ambitious when many teachers are just
trying to survive the hectic final weeks of school? For me, I find it highly
invigorating! The students aren’t the only ones who can get bored by the same
system after eight months in the classroom. Mixing it up in one or two key ways
keeps me excited through the final weeks of the year.
Of course the great thing about education is that there are
very few “new” ideas. Most great ideas have already been tried and tested by
successful educators before us. So, if you’re looking to try something new to
give you and your students a fresh perspective for the final weeks, there are
lots of resources to choose from.
In the past years, here are some of the structures and ideas
I’ve experimented with out along with resources to help with implementing them:
2. Literature Circles (Resources: Laura Candler, ReadWriteThink)
3. Whole class incentives (Resources: Teaching Channel, Oregon State Non-Food Incentives)
4. Social action projects (Resources:The World We Want Foundation, Teach Peace Now)
5. Arts integration (Resources: Teaching Channel, Pinterest, Edutopia)
If you’re already doing these things year-round, kudos to
you! What is something that you have read or heard about that you’ve been
wanting to try instead?
Maybe it’s flipped or blended learning? Maybe you want to
take some field trips to destinations you haven’t considered before? Maybe it's just a new approach to seating? Go ahead
and share your thoughts in the comments!
This post is cross-posted at The Educator's Room.
This post is cross-posted at The Educator's Room.
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