Saying Goodbye: End Of Year Activities: 6th Grade Yearbook - Αποχαιρετιστήριο Λεύκωμα από τους μαθητές της Σχολής Χιλλ!

• Time flies when you have a lot of things to do and no time to do them. May is coming to an end, leaving us only two weeks before school year is over, and I haven't finished any of my goodbye gifts for my students. The PowerPoints are coming along and so are the year books, but there is a huge amount of paper to be scanned and filled. I am starting to get stressed.

• The idea of a graduation yearbook came to me a couple of years ago, when I found one of my own primary school yearbooks in one of my boxes, in my parents' flat. It was a simple, cheap, blue notebook, filled with photos, letters, stickers, drawings and all of my friends' colourful handwriting. I simply knew I had to do something similar for my students. Of course things change and so I had to make the yearbook a little bit more appealing to my students. So I came up with the idea of a digital version of a yearbook. What follows is a description of how I organised the yearbook and how we came to complete it in our classrooms.

Step One

• To begin with I made the pages' templates, a simple PDF document containing the cover, question and dedication page and the inventory. The children simply signed the page to make the cover. 

Part One: Questions

• There are fourteen simple and straightforward questions, just like in my school Yearbooks. The questions were written by the children on copies of the following page. This year I included the following questions:

1. Who is your favourite singer?

2. Draw a picture of yourself.

3. Which is your favourite book?

4. Who is your favourite actor?

5. Which is your favourite band?

6. How do you feel about leaving our school?

7. Which is your favourite film?

8. Describe your happiest moment in our school.

9. Which is your favourite colour?

10. Which is your favourite animal?

11. Which is your favourite song?

12. Name your favourite place. 

13. Love is...

14. Friendship is...

Question Page Template

Part Two: Dedication Pages

• The questions comprise the first part of the Yearbook. The second part is more fun. It contains 44 pages, two for each child. The children wrote their names on the top of the page and decorated their personal pages as they wished. Some children needed more than two personal pages, which sky- rocketed the amount of pages in our Yearbook. 

Decorating Our Pages 

Sample Personal Page

Part Three: Inventory

• The last section of the Yearbook is the inventory, through which children can keep in touch. 

Inventory Template

Step Two

• The second step was more tricky. All children had to answer all the questions, not using their own name but a pseudonym. When we finished the questions, we moved on to the more fun part, signing our classmates' personal pages. It was so sweet to read some of the dedications they wrote to their friends. One has to bare in mind that the children in question, have been classmates for more than 6 years, which for them is practically all their lives.It is also important to mention that I told my students I would not correct any mistakes they might make. It is their Yearbook, not a test.  

• I kept track of who had answered which question, using a grid. 

Step Three

• The third step is the most tedious one: I have to scan all 150 pages of our Year book. Then I have to use a Flipbook maker, in order to make it into a flipbook. After the file is created, I have to burn 24 CDs one for each child. I will let you know when that happens...

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Click Here:
End Of Year 
Activities,  
Memory Boxes

Click here: 
End Of Year PowerPoints

                                      

Poetry Club: New Poetry Video - Νέο ποίημα από το English Poetry Club της Σχολής Χιλλ!

It has been a very busy and prolific year for our 6th Grade Poetry Club. This is the last video of the year, now my students have one each. These videos are also part of my goodbye gift to them, a PowerPoint Show including pictures, their videos, projects, and of course their Year Book. Stay tuned for more. 

Saying Goodbye: End of Year Powerpoints

I have found a valuable teacher helper in PowerPoint, especially since we got interactive whiteboards in our school. I have used it  for presentations,obviously, but also to make interactive board games, even to make the poetry videos for our Poetry Club. The ways that one can use PowerPoint are endless, one may even say that it has become obsolete by now, however I find the possibilities it offers intriguing. This year I have used PowerPoint to make interactive goodbye gifts for my classes. In this post I will try to explain how. 

To begin with, you need a version of PowerPoint, it doesn't have to be the latest one. You will also need a template that you can find online. I used one from fppt.com. Then I used text boxes to create my first slide menu. Here is what it looks like:

First slide: Our Class

OUR PHOTOS SECTION

Then, I made a second slide containing all the students' names. Using a hyperlink I connected it to the first slide. Then I went back to the First Slide and using again a hyperlink I connected the "Our Photos" text box to the Second Slide. I have changed the student names in the photo that follows. 

Second Slide: Our Class Photos
(linked to 1st Slide)

Afterwards, I made twelve slides, one for each child, to contain a collage of their photographs. Each  page was then linked to the second slide. Each text box with the child's name was linked to the child's page. So when you click on M******'s box, it takes you to his personal photo page, and back to the main Our Class Photos page. For the photo collages I used a free photo collage maker that I found online.  Here is what their photo collages look like:

And here is what a child's personal page looks like:

Sample Personal Page. Each child
has its own photo page,
which is linked to the
second slide: Our Photos.

Clicking on the name takes you back to the second slide: Our Class Photos. Clicking on the tiny house picture on the bottom right-hand corner takes you back to the main menu, the first slide. 

ALL ABOUT US SECTION 

For this section I used a freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers, which the children filled in. I found it through the following blog:

http://theartofteachingut.blogspot.com/2011/06/dr-seuss-all-about-me-book.html

Once the children filled the handout in, I scanned it and using a flipbook maker, I turned it into a flipbook, which I embedded in the PowerPoint presentation. 

OUR POEMS SECTION

When you click on the Our Poems tab on the first slide, you are taken to the page below.Each box contains the name of one of my students. Each box is also a link to the child's poem page. 

This slide is linked to
the first one.
It contains links to the
children's poem pages. 

There are twelve Poem pages all linked back to the above slide. This is what they look like:

Personal Poem page.
Linked to the
 "Our Poems" Page. 

The headline is a link to the "Our Poems" page. 

OUR BOOKS SECTION

In this section I have included projects that the children have done based on the books we read together this year. Clicking on the "Our Books" tab on the first slide takes you to the following page:

Each photo is a link to a Flash Flipbook containing the children's work.

GALLERY SECTION 

Clicking on the Gallery cloud on the first slide takes you to this page. Here I have included a Flash photo flipbook, containing photos, projects, games in an exe file. It also contains video presentations of the children's work. 

The final product resembles a DVD menu. 

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Saying Goodbye: End of Year Activities. 

Book Club: Children and Emotions

• Do you remember the first time you felt really angry as a child? The first time that you had an argument with your best friend in kindergarten and thought you would be on your own for ever? Everything looks brighter when you are a child. And everything feels stronger: sadness, anger, boredom, excitement, fear. We are not born knowing how to deal with our feelings, we learn how to deal with them, once we encounter them.  Young children learn how to do that as they go along, build experiences and social skills. 

• Once again, literature for children can offer significant help. First of all, it helps children identify an emotional state, which they might not have encountered before. Through stories they realise that they are not the only ones that feel the way they do, other people feel that way, too. Books are also a great way to suggest solutions and ways to deal with feelings. What is, at least to me, very important is that books can alleviate the feeling of guilt for the way children feel.It is only human to feel angry,  sad, or afraid.

• What follows is a compilation of books that deal with feelings. I hope you find them useful. 

1. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. 

Picture via Wikipedia. Click here for more
information on the book and M. Sendak. 

A little boy throws a tantrum and gets sent to bed without dinner. His frustration opens a door to a far away land, inhabited by angry monsters. Though they threaten to eat him up, in this world, he is more powerful than them, manages to control them and finally becomes their monarch.

The book deals with the issue of anger, but also there are issues of overpowering others and control, that are more evident in the film released in 2009. 

2. My Many Coloured Days, by Dr.Seuss. 

Photo via Wikipedia. Click here for more
information on the author and the book. 

Another wonderful book by one of my favourite authors. It goes through a range of emotions, each of which is depicted through a colour. How many times have we said to someone: "You are unfair". or "You are naughty"., when all we really meant was: "You are being unfair"., or "You are being naughty."? We are entitled to mood changes and our students and children should know that. 

3. Alexander and the Terrible,Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst.

Photo via Wikipedia. Click here for more
 information on the author and the book. 

This book was suggested to me by my colleague Zoe B. , to be read in classrooms with anger management difficulties. I haven't tried it yet, but I find very witty, clever and fun to read. We all have difficult days and we have to learn to take them in our stride. 

4. Fears, by Todd Parr

I have mentioned one too many times how much I love Todd Parr books. This book goes through what a child, not to mention an adult, may fear and offers ways to overcome our fears through humour. You got to love it. 

Follow up Classroom Activities.

Teach your students to identify feelings and learn to deal with them. Read them one or all of the above books, hold a classroom conversation and ask them to depict their feelings. This is what we came up with my Second Grade. 

What makes me angry.
What I can do about it. 

What makes me happy. 

You might also like: 

• Book Club: Teaching about Teamwork and Sharing
• It Is OK To Be Different Class Books

• Teaching about being different.

Saying Goodbye: End of Year Activities - Αποχαιρετώντας τους μαθητές της έκτης δημοτικού της Σχολής Χιλλ

Former Student Graffiti
Outside Our School:
Hill, here begins and ends
a fairytale. 

• Coming from a family of teachers, I thought that I had a pretty good idea of what  teachers do and how. Teachers wake up early, have long holidays, correct a lot, study a lot, prepare a lot, talk about their students often, some of them are obsessed with their job. No one told me that teachers also say goodbye.

• I work in a relatively small, family school, with a long history in education. We, teachers, know all the students by name even if they are not in our class. From Kindergarten to 6th Grade, we watch them play, learn, form friendships, develop skills and preferences, we know where they like to have lunch and which their favourite band is. We somehow take it for granted that these children are always going to be around. Children grow up fast, and unfortunately so do we, and one fine morning they simply... graduate.

• Saying goodbye to your students leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. You can't help feeling proud of them and what they have become, even a bit proud of yourself for helping a tiny bit, optimistic about their future and certain that whatever they choose in life is going to be the right choice. Graduation in our school is not just a ceremony. We have only a few weeks ahead of us before the school year ends. This year I have two classes graduating so that means I have to get busy!

Memory Boxes

It was while I was studying abroad that I bought my first Memory Box. It was a simple cardboard box, in which I kept memorabilia from my time in Scotland. I still have that box, full of photos, tickets, notes, though I haven't opened it in a very long time. But when I do open it, I know that whatever I have kept in there is going to take me back in time. This is why this year I have chosen to do Memory Boxes with one of my 6th grades.

Memory Boxes by 6th Grade,
Hill School  students.
Αναμνηστικά κουτιά από τους μαθητές
της 6ης Δημοτικού της Σχολής Χιλλ. 

Memory Boxes by 6th Grade,
Hill School  students.
Αναμνηστικά κουτιά από τους μαθητές
της 6ης Δημοτικού της Σχολής Χιλλ. 

I asked each child to bring a cheap, decorated shoe box in class with their name on it. In the box they have a simple notebook and a pen, so the children can write a few things in their classmates' notebooks. We also started adding photographs, letters, poems, and small keepsakes.

What kind of things can you add in a Memory Box? 
a. Photos
I asked the children to bring photos of when they first met.

b. Drawings
I asked them to draw a picture of how they think each of their classmates is going to look like in ten years time. 

 

c. Songs/Lyrics
Each child dedicates a song to each of their classmates. They write a few of the song lyrics in the notebook in the box. 

d. I will never forget the day that... The students complete the sentence. 

e. Acrostic Poems for their classmates' names.

f. Acrostic Poems for our School's name.

Αcrostic poem about Hill School by 6th grade student Kostis G.
Ποίημα με θέμα τη Σχολή Χιλλ από τον μαθητή της έκτης δημοτικού Κωστή Γ. 

g. Goodbye Cards with their names on, signed by their classmates.

h. Lucky charms or small items that remind them of each other.  
... and so much more! 

                                             

Coming up:

6th Grade Year Books 

Click here: 
End Of Year PowerPoints