Are you facing down the end of the academic year with your high school students? Your students are probably tired, disengaged, and basically itching to get out of school?
And you are probably feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and also itching to finish all that marking before your break too!
Today we have nine end of the year activities for high school students. In this list, you are bound to find something that is a salve to that itch, for you and your students.
1. Adulting 101
The first activity we have today is awesome. No joke. Want to know what it is? This End of Year Activities for High School Students activity by OCBeachTeacher
It’s FREE and is perfect because it has several end of the year activities for high school seniors. Because they really dgaf about school right now.
But show them some activities where they have to think about their lives beyond school and you’ll have them hooked.
The download includes a student self-assessment of their adulting skills, writing prompts for real-world problems such as roommate problems, and an interview with an alumni/alumna.
2. Surviving Senioritis
The second of our end of the year activities for high school seniors is this Poetry Activities, Surviving Senioritis & End-of-Year, Traditional & Digital product by Julie Faulkner.
This bundle includes activities and projects for the following six poems:
- “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Dylan Thomas
- “An Indian Walks In Me” By Marilou Awiakta
- “Walking Away” By C. Day-Lewis
- “If You Forget Me” By Pablo Neruda
- “The Dash” By Linda Ellis
- “Live Like You Were Dying” sung by Tim McGraw
The mini-unit covers the six poems over six lessons and can be used either in-class or digitally (using Google classrooms). It also includes printable versions of the poems and links to audio or visual versions of the poem.
3. Senior survival guide
The third of our end of the year activities for high school seniors is this End of Year Senior Survival Guide by Mr C Spills the Tea. This activity bundle has six activities for senior students to complete, including:
- Letter to a junior (year 11 student)
- Teacher tips
- Hashtag trending
- Overcoming obstacles
- Reflection
- Playlist essentials
- Life hacks
The project is designed to be a ‘Senior Survival Guide’ booklet that a senior student completes and gives to a student entering their final year.
4. Last week of school activities
This product by The Daring English Teacher is a great end of year activity for high school students. But, it is geared towards younger high school and upper middle school students. The bundle includes fifteen activities to help students reflect on their year.
Included in this bundle of fun end of the year activities for high school students are:
- class survey
- class pennant banner (bulletin board banner activity)
- summer coloring page
- snapshot project
- my favorites of the year
- social media reflection
- top 10
- survival list
- classroom commercial
- letter to incoming students
- letter to my future self
- thank you letter
- story rewrite
- classroom quilt (bulletin board activity)
- find someone who
- plot diagram
These activities are great because some give you feedback on how your students felt about your class and some give tips to students in your future classes.
Other activities encourage students to reflect on favorite memories from class and to thank those who have helped them throughout the year.
5. Escape room
In this fun end of year activity for high school students, students have to escape the room by completing six different secret missions. Created by The SuperHERO Teacher, this escape room focuses on encouraging a grown mindset, career readiness, and mindfulness.
Students have to complete six secret missions and tasks include:
- Creating a team mission statement and completing mazes and letter unscrambles
- Growth mindset vocabulary crossword puzzle and letter unscramble
- Comprehension questions based on an information text about Mona Patel and a blackout poetry task
- Analyzing three candidates for an art teacher job by looking at their cover letters and resumes and then answering riddles task
- Devising a solution to a ‘worst case scenario’ prompt and escaping, then using Morse Code to answer a riddle
- Student read about famous failures and anser questions, then use a Cipher Wheel to anser a final riddle
6. End of year games
These end of the school year activities for high school students were created by Carla McLeod. They are fun, engaging, and FREE!
Activities include:
- teacher appreciation/apology letters
- student-generated summer reading lists
- personal theme song activities
- end-of-year celebration ideas and more
7. End of year movies
Let’s face it – we’ve all been there. You have a hundred papers to mark, grades to enter, and a rapidly diminishing period of time to do it in. Don’t feel guilty, use a movie.
English with Ease has created these fun end of year activities for high school students that are common core aligned. The product includes 20 educational videos and 38 ELA task cards that are cover common core skills.
Included are:
- 20 educational video links to access the videos
- movie summaries and suggested activities for each movie
- 38 ELA Movie Test Prep task cards/powerpoint slides for each movie – each task card has a movie-based reading response prompt to be answered in paragraph or essay form, 5-point writing checklist/grading rubric, brainstorming section, and final draft section
Not only does this product help you keep students engaged in those final few classes, but it also helps them practice important common core skills. Bonus: it gives you some time to get that grading done!
8. End of year growth mindset reflection
Another fun end of the year activity for high school students is my product. This fun visual worksheet encourages students to think about the goals (academic or personal) that they have reached or missed during the year.
It also encourages students to think about why they may have reached or missed goals and what they can do differently next time.
The worksheets also ask students to reflect on the poems and texts they have studied during the year, and to think about which have stuck with them and why.
9. End of year fun activities
Career and Employment Prep has created a bundle of these end of the year activities for high school students. Included in the bundle are the following fun activities:
- a personal infographic
- an escape activity
- a year-end reflection card set
- and rebus puzzles
Want more?
Another great idea to tackle that end of the year blah disengagement is to review skills your students didn’t quite get.
Great skills to review are those that they use in every subject – study skills and research skills.
See here to find out my favorite way to review study skills and here for a fast and easy way to review research skills.
