French end of year ideas

French end of year ideas are always useful – it’s the time of the year when teachers are so close to summer vacation that they can taste it, but there are still a few days or weeks left. So many of us are tired and not feeling particularly inspired by this point of the school year – but it’s too early to just let those last few hours of instruction go. In many schools, we have final exams to give and students need to prepare for those. In others, the administrators insist that we must teach content right up until the last days!

What I did for the end of year

Luckily, I’m done. Last week was our final week of classes and we had finals all week. But the week before was sort of a weird week – I had senior exams on the final two days of the week, but I only had two seniors across all of my classes! That meant that I needed to come up with a way for those two students to test while the other kids were busy with something else.

I chose to have all students work on this wonderful “about me” book project the final week, as it was a great way for them to review everything they might need on the final exam. It’s a fun and creative end of year project at a time when students don’t want to think too much.

I gave each student feedback about their project, focusing on the things I knew they would need on the final exam. For students who chose to do the project, it was a chance for them to review, but also to get reassurance that they were ready for the final and didn’t need to study all that much – and I promised them that if I saw anything that would hurt them on the final, I would let them know. I was able to tell some of them to go over certain vocabulary things before the final, and many of them did so.

French end of year review

If your students have a final exam that has specific vocabulary, culture or grammar items you might want to have them review using games. You can easily make a game using Gimkit or Blooket – this is my students’ favorite way to review vocabulary terms for the end of year going into a test. You could also use one of the templates for making your own game – you write the questions and answers, and students work through the self-grading game. I have a nice variety of French cultural themes for my templates, they can be a lot of fun!

Virtual field trips and escape games

As the summer is often the time for travel and vacation, these end of year days can be a great time to do a little bit of cultural exploration. A virtual field trip can be fun – and also useful! You can do the Voyage à Paris activity with students, and since it is broken into different activities and sections you can adjust it for whatever amount of time you have.

You may only do the flights and hotel sections, or add in the food, shopping and entertainment sections as you like. Give students a budget, or no budget at all! I always tell my students that the skills they develop doing this activity will be applicable to any trip they may take, not just Paris.

A virtual field trip can also be fun – the trips are run through Google Maps and include a variety of places they may visit in Paris, Normandy, Brittany, or around the Francophone world. If you’re looking for an even more challenging activity that your students will have to really have to work to complete, a digital escape game can be fun. Some students get VERY competitive when doing these games and if you want to offer prizes for completion, they can be a lot of fun.

French end of year reading activities

For more advanced students, you might want to use the final days to get some French end of year reading practice in, but with a summer theme. The Tour de France is coming up, and you may want to read about the history and traditions of the race before it starts in July. Amusement parks are a common summer destination for many students and their families – it might be fun to learn about the history of the roller coaster and what makes each type of coaster special.