The year is drawing to a close. It's been a good experience for you and for the children. How can you wrap up the year with a feeling of accomplishment and pride and impart those same feelings to the children? We believe that children need the opportunity to experience closure to their year of learning. The experience and activities of closure can provide children with:
• A sense of accomplishment

• An affirmation of strong community involvement and bonding—a sense of belonging to a group

• An affirmation of their significance within their group

• An opportunity to reflect upon and affirm their own learning process—"knowing" themselves as learners

• Here is where I began and this is where I am now.
• This is what was easy for me to do. This is what was hard for
me to do.
• This is enjoyable work for me. This is work that I don't really
like to do.

• A satisfaction and an appreciation for the experience of working
hard at learning something

• An overall sense of pride in oneself, one's class and one's school

• A recognition of the fun and excitement in learning

• An opportunity to feel ownership of their individual and group
learning—fostering a sense of empowerment

• An opportunity to use this year's reflection as a guide to thinking
about next year's work

Following are some suggestions for ways that every teacher can work with her/his class to bring about closure and give the children complete ownership of their learning year:

1. Teachers begin the closure
process by brainstorming with the class all the year's accomplishments, events, and memories. These lists are written on chart paper.

2. The charts are displayed
beautifully on a bulletin board. The children will decide how to do the display and how to make it beautiful. They might enjoy creating artwork to illustrate their accomplishments and memories.

3. Other charts of accomplishments
can also be brainstormed and displayed such as "Words We Can Spell," "Books We Have Read," "Ways That We Have Helped Each Other," "Ways That We Have Worked Together."

4. Children take charge of another display area
and each child decides on one piece of work from the year that s/he would like to display. The class can decide on criteria and categories of work to be displayed. The goal of this display must be that everyone has a piece of work displayed that s/he can feel proud of.

5. Each child completes a "Reflection/Memory Book" of his/her own.
This can be the focus of academic work during the last three weeks of school, giving the children the opportunity to be reflective about their learning. Give children a chance to think of questions that they would like to answer. This should be a fun activity! See examples from Greenfield Center School, the Northeast Foundation for Children's K-8 laboratory school:

MY FAVORITE...
WHAT I LEARNED
I AM PROUD
YEAR-END REFLECTIONS
FRIENDS, FRIENDS, FRIENDS
THINGS I HOPE FOR NEXT YEAR
THINGS I REMEMBER

6. Children share their "Reflection/Memory Books"
with the class.

7. Children can create games
that involve information that comes from their brainstormings or from their individual books.

8. Children find a piece of work from the beginning of the year
and display it with a piece of work from the end of the year. Children share with their class verbally or in writing what they recognize they have learned.

9. Children are given the opportunity
as a class to think of ways they would like to remember, share and celebrate their own learning and the work of their class. "Ownership" is the key idea here!

10. The teacher writes an end of the year memo/letter to each child
recognizing, affirming, and celebrating the successes of that child and expressing a trust and belief in their learning to come in the next year.

We spend a considerable amount of time preparing for the beginning of the school year. Good beginnings set the tone for the whole year. It is equally important to spend time planning for the end of the year. Good endings leave the children with feelings of accomplishment and pride in their learning—ensuring the potential for another good beginning in the fall!

From the Northeast Foundation for Children Newsletter