Oh hello May, you beautiful month you. You signify the last full month of teaching for us, the last big stretch before the sweet and magical days of summer. You are also one of the most challenging months. The state standardized tests are done, a majority of the standards have been covered, the weather is warming up, and students have spring fever like never before. So…how do you keep them engaged and coming to class excited to learn? Have we got some fun ideas for you!

Read a Play

One unit we love to teach at the end of April and into May is the play Cyrano de Bergerac. This play has it all: sword fights, love, war, and deception. Students are comfortable with each other enough now to act and interact with one another - which is a must to pull off this unit. They are also mature and respect each other enough to have some deep and impactful conversations about some pretty big topics like the idea of beauty and society. Our students talk about this play for years after they have left our classrooms.

Write Fan Fiction

We recently wrote a whole blog post about the amazingness that is fan fiction. There is a reason we save some of our favorite units for the end of the year. First, students need a year of learning to be able to complete the assignments, and second, they are just so fun to teach! We are just as fried as our students, so saving a fun unit of study that our students are also super excited about is a win-win.

Try Project Based Learning

Allowing students to research and explore topics that they are interested in will have them excited to show up to class each and every day. We L-O-V-E ending our year with a PBL unit of study because we are excited to dive into the research process right along with our students. We also learn even more about our awesome students by the topics that they choose to research and explore. They always surprise us! You can read up a bit on how we teach our project based unit here. You can check out our whole unit of study here.

Create poetry

We really can’t get enough of poetry. We love reading it, writing it, and teaching it. We recently wrote about our fun take on reading and writing poetry. We also have a superb unit on poetry for students who don’t like writing poetry.

Read some awesome short stories that have fun video adaptations

We love a great movie remake, especially when they are done well. We will have a whole blog post about this one soon, but until then, here is a list of some of our favorite short story/ companion video adaptation combos. Check out Monsters are Due on Maple Street, Lamb to the Slaughter, Walter Mitty, and The Lottery, (there is a 1969 and a 1996 version of this one…beware, this one is a bit gruesome and may be best for 8th grade or high school). We also have some great short units on several of those stories listed above if you wanted to add some Literary Response and Analysis lessons into the mix.

Create Memes

Students love all things Meme…and really they never go out of style. Have your students try out our Meme It! activities for some endless fun. If that is not your style, you could try tasking your students with these fun assignments:

Have them create a meme to future students about what to expect in your class.
Create a meme about a lesson learned during this year of school.
Play a guess who style meme game where students create a meme based on a fun fact about themselves and students have to guess who the meme belongs to.

Create a Memory Book

To recap on a year of fun, give students the last week of school to reminisce about their favorite memories from the school year. Play some fun music in the back ground (better yet - let them choose the songs and create a playlist for you to share) and as an added bonus, let them choose where to sit. Now, sit back and listen in to all the fun memories you helped to make for all of your students. We dare you not to get teary eyed a time or two!

That’s it teacher friends! We know the end of the year can be a challenging one, but with these lessons, you will get through it and have some fun along the way.

Happy teaching!

Creative Lessons to Wrap Up the School Year for Middle School Students