Five Things to Do Before Leaving for Summer Break

As the school year comes to a close and summer break approaches, we know teachers are eagerly looking forward to some much-needed rest and relaxation. However, before your finish packing up your classroom and saying goodbye to students, there are several important tasks that you can do now to ensure a smoother transition when you return to school in the fall. Taking the time to organize materials, reflect on the past year, and plan ahead can help to alleviate stress and chaos, allowing teachers to start the new school year off on the right foot. The ELA Matters team has put together some ideas for you to consider before you leave for summer break.

Copy First Week Materials

Planning ahead is the name of the game! Lesa from SmithTeaches9to12 loves a game plan throughout the year and especially to ease the back-to-school stress. During the school year, Lesa makes sure to plan everything for Monday before she leaves on Friday. The same is true for the end of the year to prep for the upcoming year. There are certain things that are tried-and-true to start the year so why not get those elements done and dusted before you head off to (hopefully) relax and recharge over the summer!

Two things Lesa uses every year are a series of stations to kick off the year and a diagnostic to get a baseline for students’ reading comprehension, inference skills, and writing skills. This FREE diagnostic using the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros is ideal to do it all! It includes built-in prompts throughout the story plus some after-reading writing prompts where students can show their knowledge of the story and reflect on the big idea too.

While she might not know how many students she’s teaching in the upcoming year, she makes copies for 35 in each class. This is done before leaving for the summer! It helps to know that things are ready for the first week back AND means not fighting for the photocopies that first week either!

Take Time to Reflect

Reflecting on the year is something that Marissa from Creative Classroom Core makes sure to do each year before leaving the classroom.

Teachers spend the entire school year working incredibly hard to meet the needs of their learners, and it is so important to take some time to celebrate successes. Teachers should be proud of the hard work they do each day, and spending some time reflecting on this can help to provide some much needed inspiration to continue to grow and learn as educators.

This is also a great time to reflect on any mistakes or challenges faced in the last year. No matter how hard we try, things do not always go as planned – behavioral challenges, lessons that bombed, and communication breakdowns with parents and administrators can happen to even the most seasoned educators. The end of the year is a great time to identify any areas where improvement can be made, and to brainstorm strategies to help prevent the same things from happening again in the future.

For additional tips and tricks for the reflection process, check out this blog post.

Audit your Classroom Library

If you have a classroom library, one task to complete before you end the school year is a library audit. You want students to be able to use a functional reading space from day one, so leaving this until back to school season means lost time and students missing out on the full library experience.

Katie from Mochas and Markbooks plans to take stock of her library books on the website Book Source where she has catalogued all of her books for free. Book Source will complete an audit of the collection of books and inform you of genres you are lacking books in, as well as areas you are lacking representation in culture, gender, and sexual orientation. With this knowledge, Katie can spend time over the summer break finding books to add to those areas.

Most well-used classroom libraries likely need to be reorganized at the end of the school year as well. Katie plans to check how her books are fitting on the shelves to see which genres might need more space. Another consideration is whether you plan to keep all of your books on the shelves or look into getting baskets or bins to display special collections. This past year, Katie displayed monthly book themes on the top shelves each month but would like to figure out ways to display books more within the shelving as well.

If you don’t currently have a classroom library and you’ve been thinking about adding this to your classroom, check out this blog post that will walk you through the entire process Katie used to gather books for cheap or free, and design a comfy space her students love to read in.

Organize First Day Activities

Carolyn from Middle School Cafe knows that one of the best things you can do now to prepare for the upcoming school year is to plan out the first week of school. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’ll be teaching yet, taking the time to plan out the first week of school will make coming back in the fall less stressful.

Is there a game you like to play or a first day lesson you love to do? Or maybe a book you like to read? Whatever your activity is, pull together the materials you need for that activity and place them in an easy to access location. Placing everything you need in a box or plastic tub will make your materials easy to access so you won’t have to worry about hunting down the things you need during the most stressful time of year. Having everything organized and ready to go will make it much easier to get back into the swing of things when school starts.

You’ll be able to focus on building relationships with your students and setting a positive tone for the rest of the year, rather than worrying about last-minute planning and preparation.

So, start thinking about the activities you want to do and get organized – your future self will thank you!
For additional ideas, check out this podcast episode.

Write a Letter to Yourself

We love to ask our students to write letters to themselves and to reflect on their growth throughout the year, but it is also important for us, the teachers, to do the same! Miss K tries to take notes and reflects throughout the year but puts much more emphasis on it at the end of the year.

To get into the mood, Miss K recommends grabbing your favorite drink, gathering your favorite writing tools (maybe you are a Papermate pen teacher or a laptop writer, doesn’t matter, use what you love), and finding a comfortable place to sit.

Then, take 20-30 minutes to ask yourself a few (or all) following questions:

What was my favorite thing to teach this year? Why?
What was my least favorite thing to teach this year? Why?
What is something that I learned new this year? How can I use it next year in class?
What is a memorable student moment from this year?
What is a memorable colleague moment from this year?
What is a change you made this year that worked? What is a change you made this year that did not work? Are these changes that you want to keep next year?
What is something new you want to learn next year?
What is one thing that you are going to do this summer to relax?

Miss K recommends taking a few minutes to mull over and think about the questions before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Then, choose your favorite way to process and get to writing. Maybe, you will write a letter to yourself for the Fall, doodle a mind map, create a list, or record yourself. Whichever way you reflect, Miss K wishes you a joyful and peaceful reflection to help you settle into the summer break.

By taking care of a few simple tasks now, you can be sure to start the new school year off on the right foot with less stress and organization. Doing these simple things before leaving for summer break can help to create a smoother transition. So, don’t forget to take care of these important tasks before you leave for your well-deserved vacation – it will be worth it in the long run!

Be sure to check out these back to school blogs for additional ideas!