What to Do for the Last Week of Class

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL

Does your last week of class look like every other week of the semester? If so, you may be missing a chance for a memorable finale that will fix the semester’s learning in your students’ minds.

In this article some of your colleagues share their ideas about how to end the semester well. Salena Anderson (English) gets her students to apply their learning and empowers them to contribute their ideas to the final exam. I have tried to create a congenial finale for my Core class. George Potter (English) ends his creative writing and upper level classes with public presentations of student work.

Salena Anderson: Recognizing and Applying Student Learning

Salena’s goal for the last week of class is not just to prepare students for the final exam, but also to celebrate their progress and to have them begin to apply their learning beyond the classroom. Below are some of the activities she uses.

Student Choice Day: Just before the final week, I ask the class as a whole to select a topic they would like to explore during one of the last days of the semester. This could be a topic that we have only briefly addressed in class or a special topic that is related to the class but not on the syllabus.
Career Application Day: On this day we look at all of the different careers where someone might use a given skill set or theory that we have covered in class.
Student Recognition Day: Each student shares with the class something they have worked on, such as a very short sample of writing that was meaningful to them during the semester. Peers then provide positive feedback for each student. This gives the class the opportunity to lift up that student with positive things they noticed in the student’s writing or the writing process. Some students comment on what we just heard. Others who were part of that student’s peer review group might express thankfulness for that person as a great peer reviewer or admiration for their writing process.
Test Review Day: Students compile a shared class study guide together. They suggest possible exam questions or highlight ideas that stood out to them from the different readings and units.
Brauer Art Museum: I am taking one of my classes to the Brauer in the second to the last week of class this semester. We will use the trip to apply what we studied in class.

Cynthia Rutz: A Convivial Final Class

It took me a while to figure out how to close the semester with my Core students. Because my students are new to college, I wanted to end on a warmer, less formal note. Eventually, I realized that the only way to make that happen was to get out of the classroom and share some food together. So here are some of the components of my final Core class:

Meet in a different setting: For my last class I book the living room in Linwood House. This is the former president’s house on campus and it still has a cozy living room/kitchen area. Most students have never been there, so I make sure to give them good directions. If you want to reserve the space, contact Joseph.Goss@valpo.edu
Share A Snack: An inexpensive treat I settled on is a baker’s dozen pack of bagels, cream cheese, coffee, and orange juice from Panera. This works especially well for a morning class.
Read from Portfolios: In Core, students used to hand in writing portfolios on the last day of class. So I had them choose and read from their favorite piece of writing. Since some of their writing is very personal, this is a good way for Core students to get to know each other better.
Semester Review: To review our texts, I would create a pile with multiple copies of all our readings. Then I would count to three and have them grab a text that interested them. They had five minutes to prepare to read or comment on something in the text. This helped remind them of texts we might have read several months before.
Fix this Class: I ask them for one thing they liked about the class and/or one thing they would like to see change. In this informal setting and on this last day I have gotten some really good suggestions from students on how to improve the class.

George Potter: Students Presenting their Work

George ends the semester quite differently in his creative writing and upper level English classes. For those classes, most of the student’s grade is based on revision on their writing projects throughout the semester. Their writing portfolio or major writing project is due the last day of class.

While most classes are required to have a final exam, there is an exception for “studio classes” such as these. So he need not give a final exam, but the class must still meet during the scheduled exam time. George and others teaching studio classes use this “exam time” for presentations of student work. Students give a short presentation on their revision process and other students comment on their work.

George does the same thing for his senior seminar class, using exam time for presentations. However, this year he hopes to invite other English faculty as guests. SInce this is the culmination of student work in their department, it makes sense for other English faculty to be there to celebrate.

George and I also talked about changing the location of the class for student presentations of creative work. I recalled that Ed Byrne has had his poetry students give recitals in the Brauer Museum. For George’s playwriting class, he and his students have sometimes collaborated outside of class with the theater department. A student director and student actors would present a staged reading of some of his students’ plays in the Duesenberg Recital Hall as part of their festival of new student plays.