🗑️ End of year series, part 3: Templates

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🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY 🎯

🖼️ Student collaboration with the digital gallery walk

Your students just got done with a cool assignment — something that (hopefully!) they’re proud of …

… and (hopefully!) something their classmates could benefit from if they got to see their peers’ work, too.

The digital gallery walk is perfect for this! In my own classes, I’ll use it to let students see what their classmates did on their work. Plus, it lets them get up and out of their seats — which improves cognition.

There are two variations:

• 🐔 Free range — Students pull up whatever work they’ve done (on the computer OR putting it on their desks). They walk around the room checking out each other’s work.

• 🪖 In formation — They all move to the next desk (in sequence), sitting at a classmate’s desk and looking at their work. After a bit of time, they rotate — and rotate again, and rotate again — until they’ve seen them all (or until you think it’s time to be done).

🎁 BONUS: Comprehension questions — As students complete their assignment/project, make one part of the activity a comprehension question — a question that classmates can answer about their work if they read it / look at it. Then, when the students do a digital gallery walk, they take a sheet of paper with them and answer the question for each student’s work — and turn it in when they’re finished.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🗄️ 20 end of year templates to help students thrive

🏁 End of year series: Part 3 of 6 🏁

You have several weeks remaining until the end of the school year.

(Or just a few.)

(Or you’re in the Southern Hemisphere and it’s a whole different scenario.)

If you’re like me, I’ve never had EXTRA time to find or create something cool to support my students when the last days are approaching.

It’s a mad dash to the finish.

That’s why we’re here. Today, we’re sharing 20 FREE pre-made templates to support your students (and YOU) at the end of the year.

Ditch That Textbook blog/social media editor Karly Moura has been hard at work creating these new templates — and we both hope your students will love them!

It’s part of our six-part end-of-the-school-year series to help you survive (and thrive!) during these last weeks before break.

• Part 1: Brain boosts for end-of-year tests

• Part 2: Digital end-of-year projects

• 💥NEW: Part 3: End-of-year student templates

Below, we’ll look at the newest templates — and highlight some others of our favorite templates.

What if I use PowerPoint or Canva? Just open the Google Slides file. Go to File > Download and choose PowerPoint (.pptx). You can upload those files to Office 365 and Canva.

By the Numbers template

Want students to put the entire year in perspective? Help them see how much they’ve accomplished — and how far they’ve come?

The By the Numbers template has draggable, removeable (and addable?) icons to help them represent their year in numbers.

When students reflect on their year, it can encourage them about their progress — and give them confidence for their work in the remaining weeks.

My Year in Emojis template

In this template — My Year in Emojis — your students are going to get visual with their end-of-year reflections!

They’ll use a language they’re very well acquainted with: emojis. In the Google Slides menu, they can go to Insert > Special characters to find emojis.

Students can even add a new slide to the template to explain their answers — or even write them in the speaker notes below the template.

My Learning Journey template

Every school year is a journey. (At least it should be, right?)

You start in one spot. And by the end, you’ve gone some places … done some things … and grown along the way.

What good is a journey without stopping to look back on it? (And learn from it?) This My Learning Journey template gives students a structured space to think back over their year.

Simple End-of-Year Reflection template

Let’s just cut to the chase. Sometimes, you need the quickest version of an activity to squeeze into an already busy schedule.

The Simple End-of-Year Reflection template gives students a few quick sentence starters to think about their school year.

Use it after a test … or on the last day of school … or anywhere to gather a bit of feedback from students — and give them an opportunity to think back over the year.

Other end of year templates …

Several of our new templates focus on end-of-year reflection for students. But we have lots of others that do even more than that …

• 🎵 Spotify Wrapped — Our popular recap template is great for the end of the year. Use it to help students review a chapter — or a unit — or a semester.

• ☀️ My Summer Plans — This template in Adobe Express is a fun place for students to start planning their summer. Use it in Adobe Express or export it as an image file for a background to a Slides/PowerPoint template.

• 🥇 My Learning Awards Board — This template lets students pick their favorite projects, activities or accomplishments in the year — top 3 style — and write about them.

• 🕵️ Learning Dossier — Like a spy, students will compile a dossier — only they’ll be examining a project or assignment they did. They’ll point out certain parts that they’re proud of (or that they could do better next time).

• 📅 What’s Going On This Week — This template helps students to organize and prioritize their work for the week. In just two pages, it helps them figure out when they have time to get work done — and how to balance it all with their personal lives.

That’s just the beginning!

That’s not even half of the end-of-year templates we have for you. Check out the full post to see samples of each template — and to download them all.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!