END of YEAR MIDDLE SCHOOL ELA ACTIVITIES BUNDLE- 3 WEEKS OF FUN!

$8 off! Is the end of year close, and is the focus of your grades 5-8 ELA students on the summer holidays? This no-prep, high interest end of year fun activities bundle is a 3 week survival toolkit for tired teachers! 80 games, 15 mysteries, a movie, brain teasers, riddles, puzzles, and speeches, a Mad Libs letter to future students and making a mini-memory book of their year- phew! This bundle will keep your classes busy and entertained. All of this fun and challenge comes without creating any work or marking for you.

The Internet is not required for any of the games or activities.

I hope that your students have lots of fun before charging out of the door to their holidays!

80 ELA Games
80 fun, educational games are crammed into the vibrant pages of this toolkit. There are games for individuals, team games, mini writing activities, silly speeches and riddles to solve. The preview provides peeks into most of the sections.

Here is a list of just the individual games. All games have an answer key! Most involve speed; the first person to finish is the winner.

Non-rude parts of the body that have three letters.

Words of 4 letters out of the word ‘holiday’

Names of countries that can be made into other words

Categories

Palindromes

Vowel-less words

9 words that can be made from Washington

The longest list of 11 letter words that begin with ‘e’.

The longest list of sports

Book titles and matching author names

The longest word

Memory test

Anagrams of jobs and professions

10 alternatives to ‘big’

25 alternatives to ‘said’

Top 10 lists, such as biggest countries in the world, the fastest animal in the world, most popular food and drinks, etc.

Literary terms bingo.

Brain Teaser Mini-Mysteries
Mini-mysteries are not only fun brain teasers, but also practice listening and inferential skills. They are carrots for the end of the day, or even bell ringers. Alternatively, early finishing or talented students could read the mysteries on their own. The most obvious methods of using these 15 tales are to read each one out loud or to show them on your screen. The students then guess the solutions. If you want them to work a bit harder, they could record and explain their guesses on the included worksheet, and write their own story, using the guidelines. The solutions are on a different page from the story and its question, so that students cannot see them accidentally; that would really spoil the fun! A few stories are ‘one offs,’ but some characters like riddlers Matt and Sophie, and Mr and Mrs Orange and their twins Pip and Peel, appear in more than one tale.

Included in the resource:

15 vividly illustrated mini mysteries.

An optional tips page, explaining the most common mystery/ riddle clue types.

An optional working page, so students can write down their guesses, and keep a tally of how many mysteries they got right.

A mini-mystery writing advice sheet, to guide students in writing one of their own.

A simple teacher rubric to mark the students’ own mini-mysteries.

End of year Mini-Memory Book
This 10 sided handout guides students to make a fun mini-memory book of their year both in and out of school. In addition to some writing activities, such as a rhyming thank you poem, students have to draw selfies and create word clouds. One cloud will be filled with words about their personality. The other cloud will be filled with words about people or things that have influenced them this year. The instructions to students for the last 3 pages and a sample word cloud are provided separately. This means that if students want to put the word clouds up on a classroom wall (or their bedroom wall), the pages have only THEIR words on it.

Table of contents
Student cover -add name
Me - this year! Facts Sheet
Highlights of my year: the details

My selfie page

Thank you poem
Me - next year!
Instructions to students for the remaining activities

My word cloud
My influences word cloud

Achievement / appreciation certificate

End of Year Brain Teaser Stories, Riddles and Puzzles
The end of the year is WILD in Middle School! These end of year brain teaser stories, riddles and puzzles activities will keep grades 5-8 students happy and busy, while still exercising their critical thinking skills. The 3 brainteaser mystery stories require active listening and careful reading for inferences. The riddles, puzzles and writing races will provoke chuckles and co-operative learning. Summer holidays will seem an anti-climax in comparison!

LIST OF CONTENTS
1. 3 End of year/summer brainteaser stories

2. Summer dice roll story

3. Summer numbers to words puzzle

4. Visual logic puzzle #1

5. Summer scrambled words

6. Find the differences puzzle

7. Summer writing race #1

8. Blind group poetry

9. Writing race #2
10. School riddles mix and match

11. Visual logic puzzle #2

12. Silly book titles mix and match
13. Book titles invention
14. Summer riddles mix and match

ANSWERS

HOW TO PRESENT THE ACTIVITIES

The resource is both a PDF and a ready-to-go Easel Activity. The easiest way to present some of the activities in the PDF format, like the mysteries and writing races, is to show them on your screen. The answers to the brainteaser stories have been placed on separate pages to avoid spoilers ruining the fun of being a detective! The writing races could be completed on scraps of paper from the recycling bin.

Some of the activities, such as the anagrams, mix and match riddles and number to words activities need to be photocopied. To promote classroom spirit and to save on photocopying, these activities could be completed in pairs.

The Internet is not required for any of the games.

Film Analysis worksheets for ANY ELA movie

These short answer worksheets will provoke thought and help your students focus during and after the watching of ANY movie. The 16 questions on plot, character, and film techniques insist that students give specific examples from the movie to prove their points. No vague or one word answers are allowed! Although the questions are not factual ones - they get the students to really think about such matters as music, symbolism and theme - they are intended for students watching a movie in an ELA class, rather than a specialist film studies course. NO specialist cinematography vocabulary is used. The worksheets come in two different formats to allow you to EDIT if you wish and comprise 4 sides of questions.

End of Year Impromptu Speaking Topics
Challenging but fun! These 32 end of year speaking topics will make a perfect year ending to any ELA class. Students randomly draw a topic, have a couple of minutes to make a few notes, then speak for a minute or two each, either to the whole class, or in groups of 5 or 6. A small peer feedback handout is included – ‘Two terrifics and a tweak.’

End of Year Mad Libs Letter to Future Students
This mad libs letter to a future student activity is end of year FUN for grades 5-8. Not only does this giggle guaranteed game supply a hilarious end to the school year, it also reinforces some grammar basics, such as verb, adjective and noun, and stretches students' vocabulary. If the letter is read aloud for added chuckles, drama and public speaking classes and clubs will also relish this activity as an end of year wrap up. A fast finishers coloring and summer word cloud page is included.
Have maximum chuckles with your class by NOT showing them the letter template first. If they see the template they will fill in the word grids with suitable words and phrases, rather than wacky ones. Encourage them to make imaginative vocabulary choices rather than sticking with the ordinary.
Mad libs rules are explained to the students at the beginning of the activity. Bring community spirit to your classroom with this giggles guaranteed resource!

CONTEXT
Students give advice to future class members of PE teacher Jim Shortz and ELA teacher Ms Reid Enright (puns completely intended!)

INCLUDED

- a student guidelines page
- a student grammar review page

- 2 pages of word grids
- a letter template page
- a fast finishers summer coloring and word cloud page

Want an End of Year Readers' Theater mystery to intrigue your students? They will love playing detectives!

END OF YEAR READERS' THEATER BRAIN TEASER MYSTERY SCRIPT
Or a Readers' Theater mystery set in the summer holidays:
READERS' THEATER- MYSTERY OF THE DRAMA CAMP THIEF
If your students enjoy the mini-mysteries in this bundle, volume 2 will provide further fun, and another mystery writing assignment: BRAIN TEASER MINI MYSTERIES VOL#2

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