Last Week of School

Our last week is now over.  It was a long stretch but we made it.  We were not supposed to have an end of the year party the last day of school, so we held our end of the year t-shirt making day the previous week.  Each year my track mate and myself get our two classes together and tie dye class t-shirts.  I must say that they turned out AWESOME this year.

Since that was our big shin dig, the very last week of school we were stuck with nothing to do but wait for school to end teach.  I found an idea on Pinterest {when do I NOT say that?!} and I tweaked it to fit our first grade classrooms.  Each day of the last week of school we did something different just to keep the momentum going.  Click below and it will bring you to the document.  I changed out the "s" from the original user.  Their "s" was for sleep over and the kids were to bring their sleeping bags.  I'm not that brave, so I "collaborated" with another first grade teacher and she came up with secret pals.  I liked that MUCH better. 

Document here... 

Also the last week of school we had the kiddos do their own peer evaluations in Daily 5/Reading Strategies and Writing Workshop.  I gave them a rubric that I used for writing workshop and they were to grade each others writing.  They buddied up, grabbed a clip board and some space in the room, read each others work, and then filled out a rubric.  Most of them were on target with grading, others gave all 4's on their peers work just to be nice.

With peer evaluations in reading, a fellow teacher came up with this template.  It was like Daily 5 rotations in that it has three rotations for each day of the week but it was all buddy reading.

That was reading and writing, I also threw in some challenge math games, a mini social studies project, and a fun summer craftivity. {Sorry about the sideways or upside down photos, my edits did not go through as planned but you get the idea.}

Social Studies activity was a culminating activity for the unit we ended on..."Me on the Map"

Upside down... seriously!  Sorry! 

Craftivity was a "summer bucket list". 

With all the activities that were going on, I also had report cards to work on, assessments, profile cards to complete, filing to do, 105 degree weather, AND to clean up the classroom.

NEXT week is back to school for the new group coming in.  I swear that makes me tired just thinking about it.  I saw an upcoming class of first graders {now the end of kindergarten} walk through the hallway the other day and they were so tiny and cute.  But they also were zig zagging down the hallway, twirling, and wide eyed.  Such a big difference from the end of kinder to the end of first grade.  Wish me luck!