For most districts, the academic year ends in May or the first part of June. Along with rain showers, April ushers in the time to focus on making sure that all students are on target to finish course requirements before the last day of school. In blended learning environments, however, some students have already completed their coursework, but, must still attend and participate in school activities. How then do educators keep these students engaged and interested? Personally, I believe we accomplish this by first looking at the student as a person with unique interests, goals, knowledge, skills, and aptitudes. When we know the total picture of the student, we can focus these last few weeks on meaningful opportunities to individualize more than an academic learning path. Below are four options to use with students who have already completed their 2014-15 courses.

• Peer Tutors: Students have unique ways of explaining things to other students. Giving them an opportunity to share how they learned a specific concept, boosts their personal self-confidence, as well as increases the sense of community within the blended environment.
• Personal Portfolios: Helping students to build out or enhance electronic portfolios creates a sense of accomplishment while capturing artifacts of progress to save and share with college admissions offices or future potential employers. This process also helps students to see everything they have done and connect it to a bigger picture.
• Career/College Activities: Even though we may have several students who have finished this year’s requirements, they may all be at different places in their preparedness or decision-making processes related to careers and higher education. Provide additional interest inventories, career research tools, or college exploration activities to help them continue to move toward positive goals.
• Teaching and Learning Feedback: Blended learning focuses on giving students choices in various areas (path, place, etc.) When students finish early, empower them to use this time to research other websites, tools, games, resources, and methods for learning. Ask them to explain why they think a teacher should use the resource or how they think it would benefit other students.