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The End of the School Year: A Time to Pause and Celebrate Successes

June 03, 2019 Categories: Energizers & Activities / Joyful Classrooms / Special Times in the Year
The walls of the classroom look emptier than they looked a month ago and a few remnants of the presence of students remain: a pencil here or a sticky note there containing a past thought. As the last student leaves the room in which you’ve built a community, many emotions can fill the empty space. Read More »
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APR
30
2015

Joyful Endings: The Last Few Weeks of School

Although we hope that our students’ learning won’t stop just because school does, it’s good to help them reach a sense of closure during the last few weeks of the year. Good…
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MAY
29
2014

Class Memory Books

On Move-Up Day, a rite of passage for the children at my school, I tend to feel a bit wistful as the second graders I've been teaching head off to meet their…
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AUG
10
2012

Bullying at Camp

Summer camp was a big part of my childhood. When I think back to my experiences at sleep-away camp, I remember a clear line between the camp with an atmosphere of safety…
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APR
10
2012

Wrapping Up the School Year

You can do this one in conjunction with packing up the classroom library: each child chooses a favorite book and tries to convince classmates to read it over the summer. There are…
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JUL
25
2011

Downtime

By mid-July, my two children had finally settled into summer. I knew when I got downstairs one morning and saw my nine-year-old son, Ethan, coming through the back door in his bathrobe…
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JUN
15
2011

Decluttering Starts Now!

How much of the stuff that’s cluttering your classroom could be gone before school starts up again? Teachers keep all kinds of stuff we never use. Why do we keep these things?…
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APR
01
2011

Summer Reading for Teachers

We asked four Responsive Classroom consultants,"What's one great resource for teachers as they look ahead to the next school year?"  Here are their responses:
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JUN
25
2010

Summer Reading: Access & Choice

I’d just read Tina Valentine’s post called “Will Your Students Keep Learning This Summer?” when I happened on another article on the same topic in the current International Reading Association newsletter. “Stopping…
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JUN
15
2010

Will Your Students Keep Learning This Summer?

Did you know that two-thirds of the achievement gap in reading can be related directly to unequal summer learning opportunities? Even though I've seen firsthand how students can lose ground in their…
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APR
01
2005

Looking Ahead to Next Year

For students, teachers, and parents alike, few events bring more hope and nervousness than the start of a new school year. As the summer winds down, many teachers begin to have conflicting…
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