I remember the last few weeks of my first year of school. I had a surprise bag with lots of games, puppets, handcrafts, arts and craft supplies, toys - anything to delight and appeal to the fourth grade ESL students I was teaching at the time.
This was before the Internet-era (or just when it was starting up) and I had plenty of time to plan, cut design materials. The result was supplies and materials I would use for years to come; the materials proved suitable as I started teaching Junior High school.
Websites like this
one, offer additional ideas for summer themes, and winding down the year. But, if you have some free time on your hands, I think it is a good idea to pool your resources with your staff and come up with a few additional games that you could make, and not necessarily from scratch.
I have come across numerous technical problems with the kids at the computer room. I have a mixed bag of offline and online ideas, just in case.
I'll have to admit it, but my all-time favorite game in the classroom is BINGO. It goes over in almost every group, boys and girls, from 4th grade on up, and students can play it with verbs, adjectives, nouns, vocabulary from a particular unit... Actually, the older kids seem to love it more, for some reason.
Over the years, I have brought in rhymes, limericks, easy to download brainteasers that helped me for
preparing for the end of the school year.
I'll have to admit, the Internet is a pretty quick and easy tool, but I prefer using child-tested and friendly ideas instead of worrying about Internet connections and other technical problems.
