Last week, New Jersey’s Governor Murphy announced that we would not return to our schools due to health safety concerns with COVID-19 continuing to take the lives of our loved ones across the state, the nation & around the world. It was a sad day to receive this news, but the creative brainstorming started soon after!

How can we best highlight our students & all of their progress this past year in each of our courses? 

Understanding how different our typical “end of the year” activities and celebrations would be this school year, we started sharing ideas as a team this past week. It was important to start to discuss how to conclude our courses- with reflection, growth & feedback at the heart of our conversations with students and culminating tasks demonstrating their abilities in each mode.

We opted to plan backward, with the final school “day” June 16th. Here are some ideas we came up with, please be sure to make a copy first (all documents are in view mode) and then appropriate edits to better match your course.

(1) Self-Reflection Survey (Example Document/Google Form): Many teachers connect with their students mid-way through the year and again, at the end of the school year to check-in & also have students think back on all they have learned over the course of several months together through a survey. This survey asks students to identify what they felt proud in accomplishing over the past year, which areas they would like to improve (goal setting over the summer) and also provides the teacher with feedback as to which activities students felt most successful.  Teachers also discussed adding components to the survey to share “best works” or add in speaking or writing prompt based on a past unit. This survey can be modified and you are welcome to make changes & re-share your new & evolved version of this self-reflective end of year WL survey. 

(2) Small-Group or Individual Conferences (Example Document): The one on one discussion or small group conference is an important way to connect with students, although it will have to be over a video conferencing tool such as Google Meet or Zoom. By setting up a time to connect with each of your students before the final day officially gets here, this interaction fosters the students to reflect on individual growth, progress, and their own goal-setting for over the summer/into the next school year. Consider asking students: How have you improved this year? What are you most proud of? What did you enjoy most about learning {insert language}? How do you plan to use {insert language} over the summer/in the future? What would you like to improve upon? What goals can you set for yourself that are manageable and achievable? *Students can also fill out a self-reflective survey prior to joining the conference with their teacher- if you select in the Form that the respondent always receives a copy of their responses (under settings), they can come to the meeting with that copy & you can collaboratively discuss their previous reflections. 

(3) Asynchronous multi-modal slideshow (Example Document): Let’s not call it an IPA but it does have the components of an IPA! 🙂 Wrapping up the end of the year by assessing students’ interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational skills is a great way to see how much progress they have made- given the units & topics studied throughout the year. Since trusting grade-worthy submissions can be incredibly hard right now due to our unhelpful amigo Google translate, providing tasks that students should be able to do with ease & comfort is the way to go.  Feedback through a voice recording file (tools like Vocaroo or Kaizena, Slides add-on) is also wonderful, so students can hear your feedback & hear your comments about their demonstrated progress. 

(4) Choice Board– in the modes! (Example Documents): Teachers have been creating really neat choice board activities for their students during remote instruction- Leslie Grahn (@grahnforlang) and Liliana Lopez (@senoralopez) inspired me to create a Pascack choice board (in the Google Folder). During our past team discussions, we brainstormed creating a Choice Board with each column (three total) with different activities for students to do/submit in each of the modes. Here is a Level I example below of an end of the year-mode specific choice board for students: 

Additional Culminating Activity Ideas:

-Divide students into small groups, assign a review topic, students create an online game to share with peers (to play either synchronously or asynchronously)

-Collaborate by creating a Class Blog Post/Reflections/Website to end the year based on different topics

–ePortfolios : select three to four of your best work from the year, add to Google Folder, write a reflective paragraph about these best works, reflections for continuation in the language- set learning goals) 

-Letter to Ourselves: Write a letter (template thanks to SlidesMania*) to yourself in the language you are studying- all about the past & present school year, digitally submit, the teacher provides feedback

With so much going on, thank you for taking the time to read these end-of-year ideas & feel free to add comments below or share any great document back my way!