It’s June and the sun is starting to shine brighter every day. Who feels like staying at school when you could be at the pool, right? Yeah, but some of us still have to work in June. For the first days of school it is easy – you can always just start with the teaching material from the first page, or do an introduction and getting to know the students. But for the last day it’s different (and always hard). You are full of emotions – happy for summer, sad because you are saying goodbye to your lovely students, confused because soon you will have all the time in the world and no actual work to do. Let me help you with some ideas on how to finish the school year with one great last day of teaching.

1. Do one of Google Earth’s special campaigns, like the Carmen Sandiego one. It’s one of my students’ favorite things to do (mostly I’ve used it with my 5th and 6th graders). The activity looks like a web quest. The students go around the world and they have a mission, they click through the globe, look for clues and solve puzzles, answer questions, in order to find Carmen Sandiego. It looks like an online game and it helps the students gather some general knowledge about different countries, their cities, landmarks, currencies, etc. There’s currently 3 “episodes” of this game that the students can choose from. What I do with new students is always start from the first original game and then go through all of the others. A couple of years ago, when I first found out about these great activities by Google, I went through it all myself and let me tell you – it was lots of fun! Then the next year another “episode” came out, and another one and so on. I highly recommend! Click this link here to go to Carmen Sandiego’s Google Earth page.

2. Create a fun quiz game in Kahoot. If you have never used Kahoot before – you have to try it! You can create a quiz with custom questions based on the students’ knowledge. After this, you just need a projector to project the quiz. The students grab some smart devices, could be the school tablets, could be the computer lab computers or even their smartphones, then they go to a specific link (very fast and easy) and they all start playing together in real time. On each question they can give an answer on their smart device and later you can see who was faster, who had the most correct answers and won, etc. Try it by clicking here. It’s a very famous game and a great activity my students love.

3. Pick a fun activity from my TpT store, like this Crack the Binary Code Summer themed technology activity and active game. In this resource you will find 7 Summer – themed binary coded puzzles, in the form of jokes / riddles / facts on separate cards (you get all of it in both a full color and a black and white versions). On every card’s bottom you will see a table with the letters from the English alphabet and their binary code, taken from the ASCII table. Every letter has a unique combination of 1s and 0s. The answer to every coded word lies in the empty spots and their binary codes below. The students have to crack the code using the table and then use their Answer sheet to write down the answers. When a student is done with a card, they have to go around the room to some classmate and swap cards, until each student has gone through all of the 7 cards and filled up their Answer sheet. It’s very fun, try it out!

Another thing you can do is this engaging unplugged coding activity – Unplugged coding and crafting Summer and sea themed algorithm activities. In this unplugged coding and crafting algorithms activity with pseudocode, the students will use their problem solving and logical thinking skills to go through 4 programs (pieces of code with specific algorithms), follow the instructions and use the rules to color, draw, cut and glue different objects on some pictures. All of this happens in a block coding style with pseudocode (very simple, easy, understandable, both perfect for 8 year olds and all the way up to 12-13 year olds).

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you have a wonderful last day of school and a very happy and relaxing summer vacation 🙂