Fun Activities To Keep Students Learning After Testing Is Over

The end of testing usually corresponds with the beginning of nice weather.  Take your class outside to enjoy the beautiful weather - just changing up the setting can reenergize and re-motivate students.

This works best for lessons that do not require a lot of materials or manipulatives.  Have students bring a book outside to read, or have students bring a clipboard, paper, and a pencil outside and write.  Or, check out these outdoor lesson activities for upper elementary!

These no prep kindness worksheets are great for immediately after testing - they give students a break from academics while still having them think about something meaningful.

Then, read one of these kindness picture books.  Encourage students to watch for ways others are being kind - and then celebrate the kindness in a fun way!

Pair up with a teacher from the grade level above you and take your class for a visit.  This gets students excited about their upcoming school year and helps them overcome any nervousness.  You can take this a step farther and pair up your students with a student in the grade level above them for an interview.

This End of Year Tour Resource can help facilitate a tour and interview like this.  It has interview questions, a place to record answers, pages to help facilitate a tour of the classroom, and reflection questions.

Schools are full of people who rarely get the thanks they deserve.  Have your students write thank you notes to other teachers, the janitorial staff, lunch ladies, secretaries, paraprofessionals, special education teachers, parent volunteers, and anyone else that deserves thanks.

Students can make their own cards with paper and art supplies.  Or you could get another writing lesson in with this No Prep Thank You Letter Activity.  

All teachers want to integrate technology into their lessons in a meaningful way.  The learning curve for students to learn a new piece of technology, however, often requires large chunks of time that teachers do not have.  Use this time after testing to experiment and have students try new things.

Check out some of these ideas for integrating technology into your lessons:

• 3 Ways to Integrate Technology While Teaching Text Features
• Using an Online Comic Book Creator to Practice Point of View
• 10 Ways Real Teachers Use Technology in the Classroom
• Experiment with Peardeck

When I was in 5th grade, my teacher taught our classroom how to play chess.  It was a lot of fun and required us to problem solve and come up and follow through with a strategy.

While games like this clearly benefit students and their brains, they are not often taught in schools anymore because they do not directly correlate to a standard.

Try to take advantage of any extra freedom you might have before the end of the year to play some of these strategy games with your students.  

Have your upper elementary students write a letter giving advice to next year's class.  Have students think about what they learned this year - both academically and behaviorally - and pass on their wisdom to next year's students.

Use my End of Year Letter to Next Year's Class Resource as a no prep, scaffolded option.

Give each of your students the opportunity to teach the rest of the class something.  Have students prepare a 5 - 10 minute presentation on a topic of their choice (that is teacher approved, of course).

Give them some freedom in what visuals they should include in their presentation.  This gives them a chance to be creative while practicing their speaking skills.

Alternatively, you could have students spend some time creating and presenting passion projects. 

This technically is not standards based learning, but it is a lesson in how to organize and take care of things that have been entrusted to you.

Let your 3rd, 45th, or 5th grade students help you out by doing some spring cleaning.  There are a lot of tasks that they can help with:

• Test out all of the markers and glue sticks and discard any that don't work.
• Organize all of your books and find the books that have broken covers.
• Organize math centers and manipulatives.
• Clean out and wipe down desks.

Are your students needing a break from academia? They can let some steam out by having a paper snowball fight. Crumple up paper at let them throw it at each other.

If you need to keep your activities educational, snowball fights still make a great action. They are a fun way to engage students, get them moving, and practice a variety of skills.  Read more about how you can use snowball fights to review all sorts of skills.  

Or, download a free snowball fight activity here.