As the clock ticks down on the final days of a school year, it can be hard to keep everyone on track. That’s when it pays to have some clever teaching strategies in your toolkit. We’ve partnered with our friends at Solution Tree to provide this list of strategies, ideas, and activities to help you make the last days of the school year just as valuable as the first.
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End-of-Year Teaching Strategy: Maintain High Energy
Remember all that energy you had in the first few weeks of school? Chances are good it’s been a while since you’ve felt that way, and the same goes for your students. Now’s the time to dig down deep and find that last reserve of enthusiasm! These teaching strategies can help.
Monitor and respond to energy shifts
By the last month of the year, you and your students probably feel like you’re on autopilot. Make an effort to pay attention to the overall vibe of your class each and every day. As you sense energy shifting, be ready to respond. This might mean finding ways to calm an over-excited class the day of an end-of-school event, or amping up the energy when everyone feels a little low. Find out how you can monitor and respond to changes in classroom energy with this video from Solution Tree.
Learn more: Noticing and Reacting to Changes in Class Energy Levels at Solution Tree
Take regular brain breaks
For many grades, the end of the school year means testing time. It’s also the time when older students are preparing for final exams. This can all get pretty stressful, bringing anxious energy and tension into the classroom. This is when everyone (teachers too!) can benefit from a brain break. Whether it’s a one-minute dance party, a fun GoNoodle video, or a quick bit of chair yoga, brain breaks get everyone refreshed and ready to go on with the lesson.
Learn more: 64 Educational Brain Breaks Your Students Will Love
Incorporate physical activity into learning
Nothing drags a class down more than sitting still hour after hour. No matter what age you teach, try to incorporate some physical activity into your lessons. This can be as simple as getting up to move around the room as you change partners for discussions, or more active games or learning activities. When you notice energy starting to lag, get everyone up on their feet for a quick physical boost.
Learn more: 35 Active Math Games and Activities
Flip your classroom
In a flipped classroom, students do the prep work (reading, watching videos, etc.) at home. Then they spend their time in the classroom actively engaged with their teacher. For instance, kids might spend some time the night before reading about the Roman Empire. Then in class, they work together to create a big, illustrated timeline of the era. You don’t have to use the flipped classroom strategy every day, but mixing it in once in a while can really bring your learning to life.
Learn more: What Is a Flipped Classroom?
End-of-Year Teaching Strategy: Use Humor
Humor in the classroom comes naturally to some teachers, while others don’t feel as comfortable using teaching strategies like this one. But with a little practice, you’ll find ways to bring laughter and levity into your teaching, and your students will thank you for it!
Use humor to bring materials to life
Humor doesn’t need to be intentionally planned, although it can be. Sharing a laugh with your students is often best (and most authentic) when it happens in the moment. This video from Solution Tree offers tips for easy ideas to add some humor into your classroom interactions.
Learn more: Demonstrating Intensity and Enthusiasm by Using Humor at Solution Tree
Read funny stories or poems
Students can often learn just as much from funny stories or poems as they can from more serious literature. When you have the option, choose something a bit lighthearted and playful. Laughing students are more engaged in the material, priming them to learn whatever literature objectives you’ve got on tap for the day.
Learn more: 21 Best Funny Short Stories To Teach in Middle and High School and 40 Hilariously Funny Poems To Read and Share
Try a joke-of-the-day
This is so easy, and it’s something students will really look forward to! Each day, post a joke or riddle on the board for kids to read when they first come in. If it’s a riddle, you can provide the answer as you start the lesson, or even wait until the very end of the class period or day to reveal it. Check out some of our favorite jokes for this time of year below, then visit the We Are Teachers Humor hub for more joke roundups and other funny posts.
Learn more: 75 Funny Summer Jokes for Kids and 140 Funny Jokes for Teens
Connect with students through humor
Think about the people you laugh with the most in your personal life—chances are good they’re the people you know the best. You can do the same with your students. You’ve had most of a school year to get to know them now. You know what will make them giggle, individually or as a group, and shared humor always makes a group feel closer. Create some “you had to be there” moments for your class, and they’ll remember them for years. This video from Solution Tree shows you how.
Learn more: Showing Affection for Students by Using Humor at Solution Tree
End-of-Year Teaching Strategy: Reengage Their Interest
In the last few weeks of school, you’re bound to find students gazing out the windows at the beautiful weather, or chatting with friends as they plan for summer fun. But there’s still learning to be done, and it’s up to you as the teacher to bring their attention back to the classroom using strategies like these.
Grab their attention with a hook
You know those little teaser scenes they often have at the beginning of a TV show, a minute or two of action before the opening credits? That’s a great example of a hook—something that grabs your attention and makes you want to know more. Teachers who use hooks will find it easier to carry that enthusiasm through to the rest of the lesson. You might start with a short video, an unbelievable fact, a captivating image, or even a song. Find more ideas in this video from Solution Tree.
Learn more: Maintaining a Lively Pace With Motivational Hooks at Solution Tree
Pivot your media selections
Teachers have more ways to use media in the classroom than ever before. If you’re not already integrating short videos, audio clips, image slideshows, or other types of media into your lessons, now’s the time. If you do use media regularly, try to find something new your students haven’t been exposed to all year long. One terrific option? Podcasts! There’s bound to be one on the topic you teach, or something fun your class can enjoy together for a few brief minutes each day. Teach kids to be active listeners, then cue up the latest episode to enjoy and discuss.
Learn more: 50 Best Podcasts for Kids and Teens in 2025
Change up your classroom
This might seem like a big ask at the time of year when you’re already thinking about how you’ll pack everything up for the summer. But moving furniture or changing out some decor now can really shake things up, bringing novelty into what’s become a humdrum routine. Maybe it’s as simple as some fun end-of-year bulletin boards. Or maybe you can relax your seating chart or rearrange the desks. Whatever you choose, change can add some freshness back into a school year that’s feeling a little stale.
Learn more: 36 of the Best Flexible Seating Options for Today’s Classroom
Boost parent and family engagement
Think back to that first Parents Night or back-to-school event. How did you work to engage parents and families back then? What can you do now to include them as the school year finishes up? Maybe it’s a family arts-and-crafts night or an invitation to join their students for a fun STEM challenge day. Or perhaps you can carve out some time to make some positive calls home or write notes to families about their child’s best qualities. Parents and families can get worn out by this time in the school year too, so don’t forget them as you work to finish the school year strong.
Learn more: These Tips for Family Engagement Are the Creative Boost We Need Right Now
End-of-Year Teaching Strategy: Make It Personal
We all perform at our best when the outcomes really matter to us. When students care about what they’re learning, their enthusiasm can’t help but be stronger. The same goes for teachers: When you find strategies for bringing what you enjoy into the classroom, your own energy will soar in response. Give some of these teaching strategies a try to make things personal for your students.
Motivate students with personal projects
Choosing the right subject and project for each student can be a little bit of a challenge. Some kids will insist they’re not interested in anything, while others will have a million ideas and need help narrowing them down. It’s also important to encourage students to choose something that will challenge them without overwhelming them. Watch this Solution Tree video to learn more about how to make personal learning projects a success.
Learn more: Motivating and Inspiring Students With Personal Projects at Solution Tree
Try an independent reading passion project
At the end of the school year, your students should be better readers than they were at the beginning. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve developed a love for reading everything and anything. Close out the year by giving them the chance to dive more deeply into a book that they really do enjoy, and you’ll find every student more enthusiastic about and engaged with reading.
Learn more: How I Use Passion Projects To Deepen My Students’ Relationship With Reading
Make use of choice boards
If you haven’t been using these all along, you’ll be amazed at the engagement you get with choice boards! Giving kids different ways to interact with materials and demonstrate their learning provides a feeling of ownership that overly structured assignments just don’t. The best way to make learning personal is to let students’ strengths and abilities shine.
Learn more: Choice Board Templates (Free Printable Bundle)
Give service learning a try
Reading about the life cycle of plants is one thing. Volunteering in a community garden is entirely different, giving real-life meaning to the learning. When students see their skills and knowledge in action, improving their communities and benefiting the people who live in them, learning really becomes personal. There are dozens of ways to incorporate service learning in any classroom, and many of them make terrific end-of-year projects.
Learn more: What Is Service Learning?
End-of-Year Teaching Strategy: Keep Your Cool
The weather is getting warmer (and your classroom probably is too). Misbehavior always seems to be on the rise as the school year winds down, just at the time when teachers are swamped with a million end-of-year activities and duties. It’s more important than ever to prioritize everyone’s well-being now, so the school year ends on a positive note.
Deal with conflicts and misbehavior coolly
You’re not imagining it: Behavior tends to get out of control at the end of the school year. High schoolers may be dealing with senioritis as their K-12 years draw to a close. And at any age, this time of year tends to mean amped-up drama, sagging motivation, and generally poor behavior. Many teachers feel at the end of their rope by this point. Fortunately, there are strategies to help you keep your cool, as this video from Solution Tree shows.
Learn more: Building Relationships by Displaying Objectivity and Control With a Cool Exterior at Solution Tree
Take a classroom coffee break
Teachers are exhausted, but students are too. Rather than trying to fight all the excessive chatter or lack of motivation, what if you give them a few minutes every now and then to actually embrace it? One teacher uses Google Slides to give students a quick break, with a look at non-lesson-related things like news and weather and even funny memes. A little bit of time to relax and recharge can make a big difference during an anxious, stressful time of year.
Learn more: The Engaging “Coffee Break” Hack You Didn’t Know You Needed
Make your planning periods work for you
Planning periods? What are those? If you’re lucky enough to still have one or more planning periods in your schedule, embrace them! Planning periods let you get more work done at school, cutting down on the stuff you have to tote home at the end of the day. If you feel like your planning periods keep slipping away without getting anything done, you need the four valuable productivity hacks this teacher uses to make them work for her.
Learn more: This Teacher Is Sharing Her Top 4 Productivity Hacks, and They’re Brilliant
Focus on the positive
We tell kids this all the time, and it’s absolutely true: Words have meaning. Choose yours carefully and you can increase the positive energy in your classroom. It’s a simple flip from negative wording (“You can’t throw that ball in class!”) to positive wording (“That looks like a fun thing to enjoy at recess. For now, let’s focus on our reading.”) It might seem a little cheesy at first, but when you get into the habit of it, you’ll be amazed at how much language affects the overall atmosphere.
Learn more: 15 Ways To Bring More Positive Language Into Your Classroom and School