Creative Closure - Practical ideas for the last weeks of the school year!

By the time the last few weeks roll around, most of us are running on instant coffee and resilience. Students are tired. You’re tired. And no one’s in the mood for another close reading assessment. But that doesn’t mean learning has to fall apart.

This is actually the perfect time to shift gears and get a bit creative. The pressure is off, the exams are done, and there’s room to try things that are still purposeful, just with a little more breathing space.

It’s also a time when relationships matter most. The content might be wrapping up, but the connections you’ve built across the year are still front and centre. Creative closure activities offer a way to maintain that and keep brains working.

Why bother?

End-of-year activities often get a bad rap as time-fillers. And, there’s nothing wrong with the odd movie afternoon. But when you lean into tasks that still have a bit of thinking behind them, you’re giving students the chance to consolidate what they’ve learned and finish strong. Even if it’s in a looser, more flexible format.

It’s also a great time to reconnect with the parts of English that feel more human. Creativity, collaboration, and reflection can take centre stage without the pressure of tracking achievement objectives.

If you choose the right activities, students are still reading, writing, and thinking, just not in a formal assessment way.

What works well?

Here are a few types of activities that keep things running smoothly without adding to your workload:

Choice boards

These are ideal for a bit of variety and student agency. Try to include creative, reflective, and analytical options. For example, write a monologue from a side character’s point of view, design a visual poem, or compare two texts using emoji-style summaries.

Mini genre flips

Let students experiment with form. Take a moment from a text and present it in a totally different way. Turn a tragedy into a news article, write a villain’s dating profile, or explain a theme as a haiku.

Creative collaboration

These can be fun for storytelling games, language feature challenges, or group tasks. You can keep the content curriculum-linked but lighten the format, e.g. reworking a short story with a different tone or perspective.

Low-stakes reflection

Let students look back on what they’ve read, written, and learned. Not every answer needs to be structured. Try prompts like “What line stuck with you and why?” or “Draw a scene that should have been in the book”.

The goal isn’t more marking. It’s meaningful engagement that still feels manageable.

Let students lead

Letting students have a say in what they do helps lift the mood and motivation. A simple way to do this is by offering small decisions within a task. Let them choose their topic, tone, layout, format, or audience.

Even just giving two options (e.g. write a creative piece or design a visual response) allows space for ownership. This works well with tired classes who need some structure, but not rigid instructions.

If you can, consider handing over some of the planning. Ask students to design an activity for others to complete or co-create a class time capsule with artefacts from the year (quotes, questions, key terms, character awards, or favourite lines).

You could also try a ‘last lecture’ task. This is just a short piece of writing where students offer advice to next year’s class, reflect on what they’ve learned about writing or reading, or choose one idea they’ll take with them. These can often be surprisingly good, even from your most reluctant learners.

Giving students a sense of ownership in the final stretch helps them feel like the year has meant something and it’s a nice way to finish with a bit of purpose.

One easy option

If you’re after something you can just print or assign straight to your class, we’ve put together an End of Year ELA Choice Board. It’s designed for high school students and includes a range of activities that work for different learners and energy levels. You can use it as a whole-class task or keep it handy for early finishers.

There’s always pressure to stretch the last bit of the year as far as it will go. But a lot of valuable thinking still happens in those final weeks. You don’t need to over-plan it. Just shift the tone, make the tasks flexible, and let your students show what they can do.

A little space to create, reflect, and share can be the perfect send-off for them, and for you.

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