Everyone always talks about morning routines, but what about an end-of-day routine?  They are just as important!  Create an end-of-day routine in the classroom that will end the school day on a positive and productive note!  If you’re a teacher, you know the end of the day is rough – students are tired and their attention spans have had enough from activities all day, and to add to it, you’re most likely tired and ready to go home.  Here are some ideas to add to your schedule each afternoon to keep your students engaged.

After lunch, we complete our classroom jobs since classroom maintenance is a huge part of cleaning up after lunch. We usually pick classroom jobs at the beginning of the week or in the morning (depending on how you want to facilitate it). 

See Morning Routine for more details on picking class jobs.  For classroom job ideas, click here.

Click here to check out the Classroom Jobs Posters FREEBIE.

We usually watch CNN10 or Teen Kids News. I like to do current events at the end of the day because many students are starting to tap out from doing work all day and it is nice to put on a short video to capture their attention for a little longer.  We check for comprehension as a group with visual Google Slides activity by answering WH questions, geography questions, and giving opinions.  For a list of student-friendly current events alternatives click here.

You can find out what national day it is on Nationaldaycalendar.com as well as some facts and history for this day.  Most celebrations are a recipe, type of job, holiday, or something silly. Expand on this activity by watching a short video on the celebration day (tons on YouTube).  After this activity, you can do a writing activity, discussion, or comprehension worksheet.

If you do National Day (as mentioned in the previous slide), there is usually a food celebration each day. Expand on this activity by watching a recipe video on the recipe (tons on YouTube) or you can look up a recipe through Google, then answer comprehension questions about the recipe.  Students can answer questions about utensils, appliances, measurements, and ingredients, vote if they like the recipe, and so on.  Many students love food so this is a highly motivating activity!

Rather than the teacher filling out communication books each day, I have the students do it with me.  We fill out a portion of our end-of-day communication worksheet together as a group using Kami App, and then students fill out the remainder on a worksheet answering questions like what services they had, what they ate for lunch, how they felt that day…etc that goes home for parents to see. Parents enjoy sparking discussions with their child by recalling what happened during their day.

Students fill out timesheets to record the time they worked on or off campus (and if we aren’t participating in jobs, students can practice the skill by filling out the time they arrive and leave school). This is a great way to practice vocational, counting, and functional math skills!

This is an important vocational and life skill for students to have, so we make it a point to dedicate a few minutes to cleaning up our desks, straightening out supplies, filling away student work, and sanitizing our desk areas.  For students that need more support, take a picture of what the desk should look like for students to use as a visual.

This is a huge game-changer! If you find that your students start to get restless as it gets closer to going home, putting on a timer helps students wind down.  This also helps with students that have a hard time waiting to leave wanting to go to their transportation too early.  There are tons of 5-minute timers on YouTube. Once the timer is up, students will stack their chairs and then go home!

Thanks for reading!

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