Surviving the End of the School Year

It's that time of the year. The pencil bin is almost empty. The markers are about dried out. You are still trying to figure out what that stain is in the middle of your classroom is.  But who cares?!?! It's almost time to pack it all up and start thinking about next year's class.  I've joined up with 20 other bloggers to offer you some of our best end of the year advice and give you an opportunity to get hooked up with some great stuff!!

But I know we are all so desperately trying to get things finished up so we can move on.  So I'm going to share with you my clean up tip.  I always take one day during the last week of school and create clean up stations.  First my students all clean out their desks. They pack in their backpacks what they want to take home and toss the rest. I ask them to donate their markers, crayons, etc. to my pile if they plan on not using them.  After they have done that, I have different stations:

1. Crayon Check: In this stations, students go through my crayons. They put in a bin any broken crayons and neatly arrange the colors into their correct container. 
2. Marker check:  Students check to make sure my markers are working.  Again, they organize the colors into their correct container.
3. Colored Pencil Check:  Students sharpen and organize the pencils into their correct container.  
4. White Board Clean-Up: These students go through and completely clean off all my individual white boards.  They also check the white board markers to make sure they are still working.
5. Library Clean-Up: My librarians go through and clean up the library and put paper over my bookshelves.  
6. Game Checkers: These students go through my games and make sure all the pieces are intact and still there. 
7. Desk Cleaners: Despite having students wipe down their own desk, I still have a few who do a very thorough job to do it again.  

In addition to these stations, I always have a puzzle station open for those who just don't want to do anything else.  Very seldom is it used but I want them to feel like they can take a break from all the manual labor.  

Thanks for joining our end of the school year blog hop today. We had a great turn out of hoppers. The prize pack part of the hop is now closed. Stay tuned for blog excitement in mid July.  

Please keep hopping along to read our tried, tested and true survival tips. 

Happy Hopping!

Katie

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