The end of the school year often flies by in a blur of countdowns, celebrations, and chaos—but without a little intention, you and your students might miss out on something really important: true end of year closure. In this episode, we’re sharing simple, purposeful ideas to help you slow down, reflect, and wrap up the year in a way that honors your students’ growth.

Prefer to read? Grab the episode transcript and resources in the show notes here: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/end-of-the-year-closure

Resources:

• Freebie: End of Year Roadmap
• Freebie: Looking Back Reflection Awards
• Looking Back, Looking Ahead Bulletin Board
• Collapsible laundry baskets
• @Matt_swack on Instagram
• Join the Teacher Approved Club!
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow.
• Shop our teacher-approved resources.
• Join our Facebook group, Teacher Approved
• Leave your review on Apple Podcasts!

Related Episodes to Enjoy:

• Episode 9, Breaking Up With End of Year Awards
• Episode 11, Closing the Year
• Episode 193, Why Smart Teachers Start Planning for Next Year in May
• Episode 194, Want a Smoother Back to School? Do These 5 Things Now

Mentioned in this episode:

Is your class acting like spring break erased every expectation you've ever taught? Try the Teacher Approved Club free for 10 days and get this month's training on keeping expectations alive — plus last month's Quiet Your Chatty Class Challenge. Join at https://secondstorywindow.net/trial

This is episode 195 of Teacher Approved.

You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping

educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm

Heidi.

And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story

Window, where we give research based and teacher approved

strategies that make teaching less stressful and more

effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from

each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to

the show.

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's

episode, we're sharing the three keys to ending the school year

with heart and intention, and we've got a teacher approved tip

for creating your own sense of closure.

Let's start with try it tomorrow, where we share a quick

win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily,

what is our prompt this week?

This week, try what we call a one spot tidy. Set a

timer for just 90 seconds and have your class do a quick

cleanup of one small area of your room. You could even have

several of them all around the room doing this, and it can just

be one drawer, one bookshelf, one supply bin. And the beauty

of this approach is that it breaks down end of year cleanup

into little manageable chunks that feel doable, even when

everyone's energy is rock bottom.

I love that idea. Instead of one massive, crazy cleanup

day that is going to leave everyone cranky, you can try

planning these micro cleaning moments instead.

The satisfaction of seeing even one small area

transformed can be surprisingly motivating for everyone. If you

like this idea or anything else we share her on the podcast,

would you please make our day by giving us a five star rating and

review on Apple podcasts?

So let's talk about end of the year closure. And I have to say,

as I was working on this episode, every time I wrote

closure, it made me think of friends when they were like,

That's what I call closure.

You gotta snap your phone shut.

Well, if you've been listening for a while, you might

remember, and if you do, we're super impressed, that way back

in episode 11, we first shared this framework that we're gonna

talk about today. And it actually is one of our favorite

episodes we've ever done. It's just we completely forgot about

it until, like, a week ago. We both came across it when we were

looking at podcast episodes, and we're like, Hey, this is a good

idea! So we're going to revisit that today, and the three ideas

are reflection, transition and celebration. And guess what?

They still hold up as a practical guide for wrapping up

the school year with intention and meaning.

If you have been feeling overwhelmed or unsure how to

create a real sense of end of the year closure in your

classroom, this is the episode for you. Because, you know, May

is a lot. You are juggling assemblies, grumpy kids, packing

up and finishing grades. It's kind of tempting just to crawl

to the finish line.

But if you want the year to feel complete for you and for

your students, building in even a few moments of closure can

make a big difference, and it doesn't have to be complicated.

Our first key to closing the school year with heart is

reflection. These last weeks of the school year are the perfect

time to help students pause and recognize just how far they've

come since August. Without intentional reflection, that

growth easily goes unnoticed or unappreciated, especially by the

students themselves.

Yeah, learning happens so gradually that sometimes it's

hard to see the transformation until you take a step back and

really look.

One of our all time favorite reflection ideas is

year mapping. You divide your students into groups, and then

you give each group a subject area, like math, reading,

science, and they write down everything that they learned in

that subject this year, and then you can combine the pages into a

giant map of your school year.

Oh, and they'll be so proud to remember all the things

they have learned this year. You can also use digital

reflections, especially if you teach upper elementary students,

you can have them create a my year of growth PowerPoint, where

they select examples of their work from throughout the year,

and then they can explain how each piece shows their

development in a skill, and they can reflect on challenges that

they overcame. And it might surprise you, because students

may choose to showcase pieces that aren't their best work, but

instead they kind of represent significant turning points in

their learning journey. Kids can be surprisingly astute at

noticing their own progress if they take the time to really

look at it.

And I have found that reflection doesn't always have

to be a formal activity. One of my favorite things to do at the

end of the school year was during morning work. I would

remind the students of how at the beginning of the year, when

we would do our morning work, it felt so hard and they felt like

they would never be able to do it. And then I have them look

back at some of the first pages, because I kept it bound in the

whole year book, so that made this easy. If you don't have it

bound, you might have to pull up some beginning pages and show

the kids what one of those early pages looks like and how easy it

looks to them now. They are just so amazed at how far they've

come when it seemed that beginning. Idea that this would

be an impossible task.

Yes, I love that, and it's so easy. I think that's why

it's so helpful to incorporate reflection throughout those

final weeks of the school year, rather than saving it all up for

the last day. When we make reflection an ongoing

conversation at the end of the year, the students have time to

really process how far they have come and all the things they've

learned.

And don't forget that as the teacher, you need your

reflection to what worked this year. What do you want to

repeat? What do you never want to do again? Our free end of

year roadmap is a great place to capture all of those thoughts,

and we have a link to that free resource in our show notes.

And that naturally leads us to our second key to a

meaningful end of year, which is helping students transition to

what's next. Transitions are a normal part of life, but they

can bring up a lot of mixed emotions for students. Hey,

sometimes even for teachers. There's excitement about moving

forward, but also anxiety about the unknown. By calling out

these transitions directly, we can help students approach them

with confidence instead of nervousness.

One transition activity that can be a fun tradition is

to do a passing of the torch. Have your current students

create welcome packages for next year's class that can include

things like advice, sharing their favorite memories of the

year, or describing what to expect in your classroom. These

are so sweet to read it beginning of next year, and

students really love writing them. You can add a twist by

having students create short video tours of your classroom

learning centers and explaining how they work. That's just a lot

of fun for everyone, and a fun way to fill some of those long

last days.

It's such a great way to give kids ownership in the

transition process. It's also helpful to demystify the next

grade level with like a little preview. So if possible, you can

arrange for students to visit next year's classrooms for a

quick activity or chat with the teachers.

But even when that is not feasible, you can take your

class on a super quiet hallway field trip to peek at those

classrooms and get a glimpse of what they are up to. Make sure

you point out the fun things that you know is happening in

those classrooms, to get your kids excited about their next

transition.

That simple connection point can create so much

excitement about the transition, and it helps give your students

context for what next year will look like for them. Heidi, you

had an idea that you liked to do for transition called a looking

back looking forward timeline. So tell us about that.

I love doing this. So you start as a class, you brainstorm

memorable moments from the past year, then you just list them

all on the board, and each student chooses one of those

memories to draw and write about. This could be anything

memorable to the class, like a favorite read aloud, a fun go

noodle activity, a field trip, a memorable math lesson. You'll be

surprised at the things they remember and the things that

they don't, maybe a little bit disappointed in the things they

don't remember.

Yeah, so as the teacher, you might want to come up with a

few suggestions ahead of time, because it's likely that they

won't be able to generate enough memories on their own.

No, they all get stuck on, you know, Halloween parade

and the class party. And if getting one memory per kid is

too difficult. You could always partner students to work on this

together. So you have the kids draw their memory and a little

paper polaroid frame, and you can add a writing page if you

want them to write as well. And then you collect these to make

an end of the year bulletin board. You print the header that

says Looking back at blank grade, and obviously you fill it

in with your grade level. But here's where the handy part

comes in. When it's time to start setting up your class in

the fall, all you have to do is trade out 'back at' to 'forward

to' and now your back to school bulletin board says, looking

forward to blank grade. All you had to do is change a couple of

words.

And you're not limited to using this as a bulletin board.

You could put it on your door or on the wall outside your

classroom. Could really put it anywhere you need a back to

school display, and if you don't want to leave this up for next

year, it's still a really great activity for the end of the

school year. Don't be limited by our ideas. If you just like this

for a one off activity.

I like to put this in the hall as like a really long

timeline, so you could kind of walk through your school year,

it was a fun memory. And if you were interested in doing this

with your own class, you can find this set in our store. We

will put a link to it in the show notes. It includes the

photo frames for students to color and different size writing

sheets, plus it has all the bulletin board pieces like a

title and some cute border strips, and a teacher guide,

where we walk you through everything step by step.

And yes, ideally, this is something you could put up in

May and leave up all summer. But some schools aren't cool about

that. Why do they want everything off the walls?

Seriously, I don't understand why it's so imperative.

They're not scrubbing the walls. Yeah, I don't get it.

But if you are in that boat, we're so sorry. But even

if you want to reuse it next year and you have to take it

down, you can repost it. Just take a picture of how you had it

set up, put it all into a big envelope or a folder, and you'll

be good to go for next year.

It's so nice to have a meaningful way to fill some time

at the end of the year. But my favorite part of this activity

actually happened when school started up again. When I would

do this with my own students, I was surprised by how touched my

former little kiddos were to see their work still on display, it

helped them feel like they were still part of my class. And I

really loved having a way to show them that even though they

were getting bigger, they were moving on, they would always be

my kids.

I think that's what makes the third key to a meaningful

year end so crucial. Celebration doesn't just recognize

achievement, it also honors the connections and joy that make

our class community special.

Celebration is really at the heart of what we want to do

at the end of the school year. This is where we can recognize

not just academic achievements, but the whole experience of

growing together as a class this year. The goal is to honor

individual journeys while also acknowledging the experience

that we have all had as a group.

And you don't need elaborate party plans to mark

the moment, something as simple as a compliment circle or even a

toast with sparkling apple juice in plastic champagne flutes can

make a special memory. And something we always love to do

is student created awards.

Unlike traditional end of year awards, we want our

students to choose what they are most proud of, not what we think

they should be proud of, and give them an award for what

really matters to them. We have a free resource that will walk

you through this whole process, including several cute styles of

awards to choose from. And there is a link to that in the show

notes.

And we'll link to the episode where we talk about that

as well, if you want to deep dive into end of year awards.

Yeah, the show notes are where it's happening in this

episode.

It really is.

Another idea is to use the power of music to celebrate by

creating an end of year playlist with songs that have become

meaningful to your class throughout the year. So like the

song you always played during cleanup time, or the one you

loved for brain breaks and the one that you practiced a million

times for the class program. Playing this playlist during

your final days together will evoke so many shared memories

and create that wonderful sense of nostalgia. You can even share

the playlist with parents so they can keep listening at home.

You can also tap into that nostalgia by revisiting

some of your favorite read alouds. Like I don't know about

anyone else, but I was always reading to my students, probably

multiple times a day, so we had many favorite books that were

fun to read again, and it's a fun group discussion to

reminisce on all the picture books and the chapter books that

we had read during the year.

These are such fun ideas for celebration. But don't

forget your support staff. Having students write thank you

notes or design small posters for custodians, office staff or

specialists, it's a great way to celebrate everyone who made this

year possible and impacted your students.

But the final celebration moment that I think every

classroom needs is some kind of a closing ritual. This doesn't

have to be elaborate, but it should provide some kind of

emotional closure to your time together. With my second

graders, I ended each week with a closing circle, and that

ritual would be really easy to adapt for an end of year

activity. You just gather everyone in a circle, and you

ask students to share their proudest moment from the year.

You might have to prompt them a little bit about, you know, some

ideas, because in the moment, they seem to go blank. Once

everyone has an idea, you go around and they get to share

with the group, and then you have them think of a wish that

they want for next year. They whisper it into their hands.

Then, you know, we all close our eyes while we're holding our

hands cup together. And then on the count of three, we say our

class cheer, or, you know, we could just count down. And then

we let our hands go, and we let our wishes float up into the

world where they will be floating around in their new

classrooms waiting for them when they come back to school in the

fall. It's so simple, but it's just really profoundly

meaningful.

I did that a few times too, and it really was just the

perfect little period on the end of the school year. A good way

to get teary.

Oh yes, definitely.

When you incorporate these three keys, reflection,

transition, and celebration into your end of year plans, you

transform those final weeks from a countdown to a meaningful

conclusion. Your students will leave your classroom not just

with their report cards and summer reading lists, but with a

deeper understanding of their own growth and a sense of

anticipation for what's coming next.

And something you should start anticipating is our

upcoming teacher summer talks event happening in mid June.

This is a free audio summit with lots of back to school

strategies from experienced teachers designed to fit into

your summer schedule without requiring you to sit in front of

a screen for hours during your summer.

We'll be sharing more details about that soon, but in

the meantime, we'd love to hear what your class will be doing to

end the school year in a meaningful way. Come join the

conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Now for our teacher approved Tip of the Week, where we share an

actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and

simplify the rest. This week's teacher approved tip is create

teacher closure too. In all your planning for student closure,

don't forget that you need meaningful endings as well.

Taking time to process your own journey through the school year

is essential for your professional growth and your

emotional well being.

And surprise, our end of year roadmap is the perfect free

resource to help you do this. You can reflect on the teaching

strategies that really worked well this year, challenges you

navigated and personal growth that you experienced as a

teacher. And it's just all an easy to use handy dandy digital

format that you can just pull up wherever you need it.

If you haven't downloaded the free end of your roadmap

yet, what are you waiting for? The link is in the show notes.

To wrap up the show. We're sharing what we're giving

extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra

credit?

I'm giving extra credit to my new collapsible laundry

baskets. Ooh, fancy. They are from clever made and I got them

on Amazon, and they come in a set of two, which is great,

because you always need more laundry baskets. But the key is

they fold totally flat when you're not using them. And I

have tried other collapsible laundry baskets before, and they

are either too flimsy, so that once you get the laundry in

there, they kind of fall apart, or they're too bulky when you

collapse them, you know, like those, like silicone ones, that

you collapse and they're still, like, three or four inches tall.

No, this is, like, basically flat when you collapse it and it

stays collapsed. It's so good. This is, like, the perfect

Goldilocks laundry basket.

I'm wondering, I'm just thinking of, like, teachers who

are gonna have to be hauling stuff home for the summer that

they might need to work with. Do you think that would be like,

that would work for transporting, like, big, you

know, teacher manuals and books and stuff?

Maybe. I mean, it's pretty sturdy because it holds,

like, it's got a, like, solid, solid bottom, and then the top

is made of, like, a steel frame, and then it's got, like, really

sturdy, like, a pop up brace that pops up on the sides when

you want it up. So I think it could. I think it could. You

might want to be careful about, like, carrying it, I don't know.

You'd have to test out how much weight it could hold, so you

don't bust them. Like a reusable shopping bag is not as sturdy,

but less expensive if they bust, so you'd have to weigh out and

decide which things go in what kind of container.

It could be nice. So if they fold flat, you could just,

like, tuck it in your cupboard over the rest of the year and

just pull it out every May or June. It can be real handy.

Well, experiment and see.

Yes, let us know, people. What are you giving extra credit

to, Heidi?

My extra credit goes to Matt Swack on Instagram, and

it's Matt, M, A, T, T, with an underscore, Swack, S, W, A, C,

K, and I'll put a link in the show notes. But his account on

Instagram is just full of beautiful drone shots of nature.

There's just waterfalls and beautiful trickling streams and

lush green trees, and it's just gorgeous. Not a lot of the

landscape that we have around here, so it's lovely to see, and

it's so calming. His account is one of my favorite ones to watch

at the end of the day to unwind, so if you need a little

breather, check out Matt Swack Instagram, 10 stars. So good.

That's it for today's episode. Remember our three keys to

closing the school year with heart and intention—reflection,

transition and celebration.

And don't forget to download our free end of your

roadmap where you will find everything from reflection

prompts to task checklists to set you up for success as you

transition from school year to summer.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm

Heidi.

And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow

or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an

episode.

You can connect with us and other teachers in the

Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.

Bye for now.

Bye.