Ending the Year Strong

As we head toward the end of the school year, I'm curious: How do you keep your students engaged and learning through the very last day of school? (This is a real question, not a rhetorical one, so email me and I'll share out.)

I did a little online sleuthing and came up with the following blogs that you might like if you are looking for inspiration.

My first stop, as it often is, was Glenn Wiebe, who came through with "7 Resources for the End of School" and "3 Things You Need to Do Before the End of the School Year". (The latter encourages teachers to reflect on what worked and what didn't last year, collecting student feedback in addition to end of year projects.  

Alyssa Teaches had published this list of End of Year Social Studies Activities for Upper Elementary Students.

Two common threads across multiple blogs were that the end of year is

1. a great time for doing activities and projects you couldn't get to earlier and
2. a good time to allow students to show off what they've learned. 

With that in mind, here are some Montana history lesson plans that might fit well into your end of year plans.

• These lesson plans cross multiple time periods, so might be best for the end of the year. Plus--do you really think you've incorporated enough women's history into your class thus far? 
  • Montana Women at Work: Clothesline Timeline Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 4-12) This primary-source based lesson asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook.
  • Montana Women's Legal History Lesson Plan. (Designed for grades 11-12). In this 1-2 period activity, students will examine sample Montana legislation from 1871 to 1991 that particularly affected women's lives to explore the impact laws have on the lives of ordinary people and why laws change.
• Here's another lesson plan that crosses multiple time periods. And it's fabulous. Reader's Theater: Letters Home from Montanans at War (Designed for 7th-12th). This three-to-five period unit asks students to work in groups to read and interpret letters written by soldiers at war, from the Civil War to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. After engaging in close reading and conducting research to interpret the letters, they will perform the letters as reader’s theater. Preview this lesson by watching Rob Hoffman perform one of the letters, a 2005 email from Helenan Cory Swanson, who was serving in Iraq.
• Have your students use Digitized Montana Newspapers to create an exhibit about how life in Montana has (and has not) changed over the last 150 years. Divide up the decades and ask students to use newspaper advertisements and articles to find something people were doing for fun each decade. Complicate it by having them also use the newspaper ads to feature some aspect of available technology and/or inventions. 
• Create a living statue museum or have students write biographical poems about a notable Montanan using these biographies. (The lesson plan focuses on Montana women, but you can easily adapt it to both men and women if you'd like.)
• Integrate Art! If you haven't already taught The Art of Storytelling: Plains Indian Perspectives (K-12), now's the time. I can imagine adapting the ledger art assignment to ask students to look back at the last year and draw something they are proud of. 
• Explore the history and architecture of your town, asking "how does our community fit into the larger trends of Montana history, by using resources listed as part of Chapter 14 of Montana: Stories of the Land--"Towns Have Lives, Too", including
  • reading and discussing the chapter itself,
  • having students analyze a building using this Building Analysis Worksheet,
  • taking a walking tour using the Historic Montana App or a walking tour brochure.
• Have your students choose the top ten (or top five) most significant events in Montana history. Consider making a March Madness style competition out of it. (See the results from back when we did this with adults in 2012.) You could also do this with the most significant (or awesome) person in Montana history.

How do you end your year strong? 

P.S. Don't forget: MTHS is offering three teacher workshops this summer (in Great Falls, Missoula, and Helena.) Learn more here.