Here is Part Two of the End of the Year Activities and Projects post (click here for Part One):
Class Awards – these are probably more suited to younger rather than older students, but some could be funny for older students as well. Have your class vote on end of the year awards. For example:
- Most Freckles
- Neatest Desk (and/or Messiest Desk)
- Most Improved Handwriting
- Awesome Artist
- Ravenous Reader
- Miss/Mister Manners
- Super Style
- Problem Solver
- Always Cheerful
- Prince Charming
- Curious George
Here are some award templates in Word that you can customize:
Also, Crayola has a free online certificate maker here: Crayola Certificates
Create-a-Comic – Pose a problem, then have your students create a comic strip in which the characters act out the solution. Give students a narrative writing prompt for a comic strip project. Read any good books lately? Allow students to complete a book report or story summary in the form of a comic strip. Have students describe the water cycle, the life cycle of a butterfly or frog, the rock cycle, or the life cycle of a plant in a comic strip. Of course, these are just a few ideas. You can do this with or without using computers – if you have some talented artists, they may even prefer to draw their own comic strip!
Here are some free, printable comic strip templates:
- Blank Comic Strip – 4 boxes
- Blank Comic Strip – 4 medium squares and one large rectangle
- Blank Comic Strip – 12 small boxes
There are also several decent online comic strip creators that are free:
- Make Beliefs Comix
- Bitstrips Comic Builder
- Professor Garfield’s Comics Lab
- Read-Write-Think Comic Creator
Student Created Puzzles and Teacher Created Puzzles- Create puzzles to print out and give your students or have your students create a puzzle. For example, have students create a crossword puzzle based on a novel they read as a class assignment this year. The following site will allow you to do all this for free!
Discovery Education Puzzlemaker - create puzzles including, but not limited to:
- Word Searches
- Crossword Puzzles
- Cryptograms
- Number Blocks
- Math Squares
Simulations - most of these activities are better suited to middle and high school students – you will need a computer lab or laptops:
- Nobel Prize Educational Games/Simulations - there are lots of simulations at this site. The games and simulations are based on Nobel Prize-awarded achievements in the following areas:
- JA Titan Business Simulation – students can register to play for free and can invite each other to play together (up to 8 players). There are practice sessions available and private games. Students can select whether they wish to play a short, regular, or long game. Students choose a business scenario and learn about basic economic concepts, business management, marketing, research, and production while playing.
Create-a-Board-Game - students create a board game based on a unit covered during this school year. This activity can be done collaboratively and requires materials like paper, scissors, poster board, and glue sticks. Students may use the templates provided for the question/answer cards and the game board, or they may create their own – especially if they want their game board to be larger than a sheet of paper (my kids used poster board). Teachers may opt to allow students to create the game using the computer (to enter true/false, multiple-choice, and/or short answer questions and add graphics), or give students blank cards and game board sections to fill in by hand. Here are some templates done in Word you can use (feel free to change the graphics):
- Question/Answer Cards – Set 1
- Question/Answer Cards – Set 2
- Question/Answer Cards – Set 3
- Quiz Game Board - this game board goes with the question/answer card sets above
- Spokes Game Board - a game board with a shape similar to Trivial Pursuit
- Hex Game Board - black and white game board
- Plain Game Board - black and white game board with square shapes
- Colorful Game Board - game board in pastels
- Basic Game Board - basic game board in bright colors
- Cards – Squares – Set 1
- Cards – Squares – Set 2
- Cards – Squares – Set 3
- Cards – Squares – Set 4
- Large Cube - use in place of a die
- Spinner - a game spinner
This concludes Part Two of the “End of the Year – Tech (and Non-Tech) Class Activities” post. Stay tuned for Here is Part Three!
