June Life – Life of the Rookie Teacher

I am pumped! Today has been an emotional day for sure. I was so excited for this day to come but when I was sitting in my room with my kiddos the last 5 minutes of the day, I realized I didn’t want them to leave. It has been such a great and amazing year.

We started the day off by moving all of our tables into one giant table. I wanted us to be together as a group for our last day instead of separated by 5 different tables. They came in and it was very chaotic (just as expected.) I had a mini word search for them to work on as something to do but most of them didn’t find that to be as exciting as laughing and talking with the rest of their friends, which is understandable. By the time they settled down we came to make a circle at the front of the classroom for our last morning meeting together.

During the meeting we did an activity that we did on the first day of school. The activity is one of my favorites that involves toilet paper (which they find to be hilarious!) I pass around rolls of toilet paper and they are told to take 1-3 pieces. (Some versions of this activity say to have them take as many as they want without telling them what it’s for but I found with 3rd graders, that was too much to handle.) On the first day of school they had to then tell myself and the class that many things about themselves, today they had to share that many memories/favorite things about 3rd grade. It was super sweet. Most of them took it pretty seriously and had some really good answers. We had some funny moments that came back up as well. It was nice for me to get a flashback of the year to remember what all happened.

I then had them go back to their spots and take out something to write with. I gave them each a blank piece of printer paper and told them to write their name in the middle and circle it. We then spent the next 15 minutes passing each sheet around the table so each student could write something nice on everyone’s piece of paper. It could be something they liked about that person, a nice memory, or a kind word. Again, most of them took this seriously and loved it. (Yes a few tried to be “funny” or “too cool” for the activity but the nice thing was that the rest of the class didn’t feed into any of that.)

Once we finished I read the great book Last Day Blues by Julia Danneberg and then we went to play outside. They went straight to specials and I took out their end of the year gifts to put at their spots. I found a pack of 24 “80’s style” sunglasses on amazon for $16.47 (prime) and 24 jump ropes for $39.75 (prime) and put together a little message to go with it. Props to Pinterest’s help on this one. I wrote each of them their own personalized card and put in the message “you shined so bright this year, now it’s time to jump into summer” into each one. (Hence the sunglasses and the jump ropes….not original, I know but easy!) Because they are sweet 8 and 9 year olds, they LOVED it!

To end the day I had put together a slideshow/video of our year together. I love taking pictures of everything we do throughout the year because I love looking back at the memories and how much they’ve grown. I also love putting it together into one movie to share with all of the families. We watched our slideshow and then took some final end of the year class pictures.

I am going to miss my class so much! We’ve had our struggles, oh yes, but they were all sweet and kindhearted and that is something I will truly miss. They have been such an incredible group of kids who cared so much about everyone else. My one goal when the year starts is to make them all love to be at school and today I got to see that I accomplished that. One of my boys who has never been afraid to tell me he hates school told me today he was very sad that school was over and that he would really miss me. He followed that up with a hug and I almost started to cry. It was everything I had worked so hard for. It’s those moments that make it all worth it.

That being said, I am very happy it is summer! I am EXHAUSTED and ready to sleep, read, swim, eat, and do whatever else I want to do when I want to do it. Tonight I plan on binging on pizza and having a nice cold one as my reward for making it through! Happy summer to my fellow teachers who are on their breaks and to all of my friends still in school, keep plugging through, you are AMAZING!!

As for me, peace out to year 2! I am so excited for year 3!!

ALMOST DONE!!!! Oh man, it has been a long road to get here but we officially only have 2 1/2 days left of school. I am so excited!! For the last week of school I want to do some different and fun activities to keep them motivated to finish the week out strong. Yesterday I did one of my absolute favorite activities that involves the scientific method, a little STEM, and some water bottle flipping!

I found this AMAZING activity on TPT from the shop Carly and Adam. The activity is officially called End of the Year STEM Water Bottle Flip. When my kiddos heard “water bottle flipping” they lost their minds!

The resource comes with enough pages to create 3 different packets worth of testing. You can either test different bottle sizes, different bottle shapes, or how full the bottle is to see which has the best flipping result. We did our experiment on how full the bottle is (so I only had to buy 1 pack of 24 bottles and not multiple packs.) No matter what experiment you choose, the first page in the packet is their prediction page. They form a hypothesis on which will have the best result and why. Once they make their predictions, it’s time for their favorite part.

The second part of the experiment is obviously to test and see which has the best result. For our experiment they had a recording sheet (the one below) to fill out as they went. They had to flip the bottle 20 times at each level and record if the bottle landed horizontal or vertical. After they tested the 4 levels they could easily see which had the best result.

They LOVED this part. I took them outside (because the water bottles will bust open and it saves a lot of time cleaning up) and let them go at it. They thought it was so fun and cool that they got to flip bottles in school as part of a science experiment. I also had lots of fun too, taking pictures and slow motion videos to show parents and to put in our end of the year slideshow.

When the flipping was done we came back inside to record our results. Most had vastly different results (because of all of the different variables, like how they each flipped the bottle) but it was a great discussion piece on why we had different results. They filled out their final report page and then was able to finish off the water they had left (if there was any left.)

It was such a fun activity and one of my all time favorites! I did this last year with my 4th graders and they had just as much fun. It’s an easy twist on something they love to do so they don’t really know they’re learning.

Summer is almost here and I am just hanging on. I love my kiddos but I am ready for the nice summer break. We have many activities coming up in the next couple of days that hopefully will help the days fly even more. Happy June!

For more day to day activities and lessons (and summer fun) go follow my instagram @lifeoftherookieteacher!