The Last Closing Circle
On the last day of school, before it gets buckwild with parties or students leaving early, I like to have one last closing circle together.
A closing circle allows students time to reflect and set goals at the end of the school day. Think of it as a morning meeting in reverse. I had these every day in my classroom thanks to my amazing professor, Linda Lantieri.
Particularly in elementary schools, there is nothing quite like the community you build across the year with your group of students. These kids spend all day, every day together for the better part of a year. Like it or not, there’s a special bond that happens that cannot be recreated next year with a new teacher and new classmates. No matter how eager we are to boot this year’s class out the door and welcome summer, it’s important to honor the connection that was created and cultivated throughout the year.
A closing circle is a great place to allow students one last chance to share that connection.
At the 2020-2021 school year, I wanted to create a meaningful experience for my second graders considering all that we had been through. We started the year on zoom, a large handful of us having never met a classmate in person or having stepped foot in the school (the teacher included!) Over the next couple of months we transitioned slowly back into the classroom, navigating masks and quarantine and recess drama along with all the other complications of being seven years old. As I thought about having one last closing circle, I decided to give students a chance to share their favorite part of the year and a wish for anyone at all, including the class. What happened was a bit of magic.
Students went around the circle just like we usually did but used the following sentence stems:
My wish for you…
My wish for us….
They could choose a classmate to make a ‘wish’ for, which was just a fancy way of saying what I hope for you in the future. They could also make a wish for our whole class as a way to have closure on the community that would no longer be at the end of the closing meeting.
Kids are truly amazing when you give them an environment filled with safety and love. During that closing meeting, students wished friendship and happiness to the classmate who was nervous about moving to a new city over the summer. Students wished good health to the classmate who had lost their music teacher to covid earlier that year. Students wished each other so much love and support during that meeting, it was truly inspiring to see the goodness in humanity.
If you are looking to close out your year on a positive note and give students an opportunity to connect one last time, try a closing circle. It just might be the closure you need to embrace your summer.
