last week of school activities
·

10 Exciting Last Week of School Activities That Support Literacy Skills

ByNatalie

Our students have worked hard all year long – let’s reward them with some fun last week of school activities that they can do indoors or outdoors! I’m putting a literacy-twist on some classic end of the school year games and activities (relay races, bingo, charades, and hopscotch to name a few). Your students will love the chance to get outside and move their bodies, and you’ll love the fact that they’re reinforcing important literacy skills!

Last Week of School Activities:

  1. Phonics Scavenger Hunt (Indoor or Outdoor)
  2. Decode and Color With Music (Indoor)
  3. Word Relay Race (Outdoor)
  4. Phonics Hopscotch (Outdoor)
  5. Phonics Bingo (Indoor)
  6. Fluency Charades (Indoor or Outdoor)
  7. Phonics Twister (Indoor)
  8. Decode the Secret Message (Indoor or Outdoor)
  9. Read and Draw Challenge (Indoor)
  10. Silly Sentence Challenge (Indoor or Outdoor)

1. Phonics Scavenger Hunt (Indoor or Outdoor)

Objective: Reinforce phonics skills by finding objects or words.

Materials: Index cards, markers, tape, and a classroom or outdoor area.

How to Play: 

  1. Write words featuring the phonics patterns you’ve studied on index cards and hide them around the classroom or outside. 
  2. Students go on a scavenger hunt to find the cards, decode the words, and sort them by patterns (e.g., long vowels, blends, digraphs). 
  3. You can also have students find real objects outdoors that match certain sounds or word families.

2. Decode and Color With Music (Indoor)

Objective: Create a relaxing ambiance with soft lighting, instrumental music, and coloring worksheets. 

Materials: Decode and Color Bundle (choose any level depending on students’ abilities).

How To Play: 

  1. Set a relaxing ambiance by turning off the lights and playing soft music (open the classroom windows for a touch of nature or head outdoors with clipboards and crayons). 
  2. Students first need to map and write (encode) the given words in the sound boxes to find the color code. 
  3. Then, they decode (read) by finding each word and color the picture according to the code. 

3. Word Relay Race (Outdoor)

Objective: Practice encoding and decoding in a high-energy game.

Materials: Cones, chalk, or tape.

How to Play: 

  1. Set up a relay race course. 
  2. Split students into two teams. 
  3. One member from each team runs to a designated spot, grabs a card with a word on it, and runs back to their team. The team must decode the word and use it in a sentence. 
  4. The next student runs and repeats. 
  5. The team with the most correctly decoded words wins.

4. Phonics Hopscotch (Outdoor)

last week of school activities

Objective: Combine physical activity with phonics review.

Materials: Chalk (if outdoor), tape (if indoor).

How to Play: 

  1. Create a hopscotch board with word families, blends, or digraphs written in the squares (e.g., “sh”, “ch”, “-at”, “-op”). 
  2. Students hop from square to square while saying the sound or decoding a word that fits in that word family. 
  3. This helps reinforce sound-spelling correspondences in a fun, active way.

5. Phonics Bingo (Indoor)

Objective: Review phonics patterns and high-frequency words.

Materials: Bingo boards, markers or chips.

How to Play: 

  1. Create Bingo boards with words that use specific phonics skills you’ve covered (e.g., vowel teams, r-controlled vowels). 
  2. Call out a word or phonics pattern, and students mark the word on their board. 
  3. First student to get a Bingo has to read all their words aloud to win.

6. Fluency Charades (Indoor or Outdoor)

Objective: Practice reading with expression and fluency.

Materials: Short sentences or phrases on cards.

How to Play: 

  1. Write simple sentences or phrases on cards. 
  2. Students take turns acting them out silently while the others guess what they are. 
  3. Once guessed, the student must read the sentence fluently. 
  4. This reinforces expression and fluency in reading aloud.

7. Phonics Twister (Indoor)

Objective: Review phonics skills in an interactive game.

Materials: Twister mat, phonics words or sounds.

How to Play: 

  1. Create a Twister mat with sounds, word patterns, or blends. 
  2. Call out a phonics sound (e.g., /ch/, /ai/) and a body part (right hand, left foot), and students must place the correct body part on a word with that sound. 
  3. This helps them think about word patterns and phonics in a playful way.

8. Decode the Secret Message (Indoor or Outdoor)

Objective: Practice decoding and encoding using familiar phonics patterns.

Materials: Whiteboards, markers.

How to Play: 

  1. Write a series of words on the board that, when decoded, form a secret message. For example, “The _a_t is on the _a_t.” 
  2. Have students take turns decoding the sentence and filling in the missing words with clues based on phonics rules you’ve learned throughout the year.

9. Read and Draw Challenge (Indoor)

Objective: Practice reading comprehension and creativity.

Materials: Short sentences or paragraphs, drawing paper, crayons or markers.

How to Play: 

  1. Give each student a sentence or short paragraph to read. 
  2. After they read it, they must draw a picture to illustrate what they understood. 
  3. This reinforces decoding, fluency, and comprehension in a creative and fun way.

10. Silly Sentence Challenge (Indoor or Outdoor)

Objective: Reinforce sentence building and phonics skills.

Materials: Word cards (nouns, verbs, adjectives, sight words).

How to Play: 

  1. Students choose random word cards and create silly sentences using them. 
  2. The goal is to use phonics and word recognition to read and write the sentence correctly. 
  3. Encourage students to read their silly sentences aloud to practice fluency.

More Classroom Activities & Resources

I hope your students have a blast with these last week of school activities! If you’re looking for more resources, check out the posts below:

You'll Also Love...