Celebrating the end of the school year is usually a fun and memorable experience. This year with distance learning in place, teachers are left wondering how they can try to still celebrate their year. I wanted to share 3 easy and fun ways to hold a virtual end of year celebration.
Before I dive in, I wanted to let you know that I do have this information in video format if you want to watch or listen to it instead. If you enjoy watching this video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I share tips, ideas, and activities for the primary classroom every single week!
If you would like to read the information, just keep scrolling!
1: VIRTUAL END OF YEAR AWARDS CEREMONY!
In the past when holding an end of year celebration, I would always hold a little awards ceremony with our classroom. To do this, I would find editable awards on TpT and choose a special award for each and every student. When students would come up to the front of the class, I would ask their classmates to share a few compliments about that special student. I loved hearing the compliments and watching my students smile hearing that they were a great friend or a helpful classmate to someone else!
Thankfully, the editable awards can be used virtually because you need to edit them in Powerpoint, so you can still throw your students a virtual awards ceremony by creating a little slideshow to share with them. This can be presented live via a Zoom/Google Meet session, or saved as a video and sent out to your students.
To add the compliments in there, what I would do is send out an email to all my students asking them to brainstorm some compliments fo each of their classmates. While students are home during distance learning, this is great way to have them reminisce and think of their classmates during this time. Then, I would add some of the compliments to their award. This is a great way to have students feel special while being apart from others.
Here is an example I made for my son, Calvin:
If you hold an end of year celebration live, a fun way to close it out would be to share your screen and watch the Disney World fireworks at the end! They’ve been sharing their show during this time, so it would be a fun way to sit back, relax, and enjoy something together.
You can see the Disney Fireworks show here. As for awards, my friend Haley O’Connor has created some great editable ones you can find here: End of year Awards.
2: Host a virtual party
To do this, you would need access to something like a Zoom or Google Meet platform, so you would have to assess if you can do this with your students. You may choose to do this in the evening and pick a fun theme! Students can wear their pajamas, bring their stuffed animals and popcorn, and you can read them a story or screenshare a short movie.
This is just a fun way to get together, see one another’s faces, and ENJOY something as a class! After you read the book or watch the movie, you can all chat and share your favorite parts before signing off!
3: A Balloon Pop activity
You’ve likely seen an end of the year, balloon pop all over Pinterest. With this idea, teachers blow up 10 balloons for the last 10 days of school like a countdown. Each balloon will have an activity or a theme to follow each day to help celebrate the end of the year! I would always have themed learning days at the end of the year and each themed would be inside a balloon!
I started thinking about the technology I have and realized you could still do something similar with a virtual balloon pop.
So, I created an editable Google Slides activity where you can click on any one of the 5 balloons and it will move upwards revealing a fun activity or theme you may want to do with your classroom.
In my Youtube video I share how it works, but above is a little video showing how it works!
If you want to try this out, go ahead and download the free editable balloon pop Google Slide by clicking the image below:
So there are 3 fun and easy ways to go ahead and celebrate your year virtually with your students. This year will be one to remember for all the good and all the bad, so I feel like any small thing we can do to help our students feel safe, secure, and feel a little bit of joy during this time is a win.
How are you celebrating the end of this year?
Pin to remember:
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