May Teaching Ideas: A Planning Guide for Elementary Teachers

May is the home stretch — and one of the hardest months to teach well. Field trips, field day, spring concerts, standardized testing, and the creeping sense that summer is close all compete for your students’ attention. But May also has some of the most genuinely meaningful instructional opportunities of the school year, if you plan for them intentionally.

This guide covers everything you need to plan a strong May: the key dates and holidays worth building around, classroom activity ideas that stay rigorous even when students are mentally checking out, and ready-to-use resources for every week of the month.

Key Dates to Plan for in May

• Teacher Appreciation Week — First full week of May
• Cinco de Mayo — May 5
• Mother’s Day — Second Sunday in May
• Memorial Day — Last Monday in May (no school)
• Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — All month
• Mental Health Awareness Month — All month
• End-of-year testing window — Varies by state, typically wraps up in May

Teacher Appreciation Week

Teacher Appreciation Week falls during the first full week of May — and while it might seem odd to build it into your lesson plans, your students are aware of it and talking about it anyway. Leaning into that energy is actually a great instructional move.

One of the best Teacher Appreciation activities is having students write a letter to a favorite teacher from a previous year. This hits the friendly letter format standard, gives students a real audience and a real purpose, and is something colleagues genuinely treasure when they receive it. Start with a class brainstorm and model the process using your own favorite teacher from childhood — then have students work from a graphic organizer before drafting.

The letters can be delivered in person or sent home for mailing. Either way, the writing is real and the impact lasts.

Cinco de Mayo — May 5

Cinco de Mayo is a natural opportunity to build cultural awareness while keeping instruction grounded in real reading and writing skills. The holiday commemorates the Mexican militia’s victory over the French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 — not Mexican Independence Day, which is a common misconception worth addressing with students directly.

Strong Cinco de Mayo instruction looks like: a nonfiction read aloud that explains the actual history, a short writing response that asks students to distinguish between myth and fact about the holiday, or a compare and contrast activity about Mexican and American cultural traditions. The goal is genuine understanding, not just a fiesta theme.

For writing, Cinco de Mayo writing prompts that ask students to write expository, narrative, or opinion pieces in the context of the holiday keep the rigor high while making the topic feel relevant and timely.

Mother’s Day Writing — The Most Heartfelt Instruction of the Year

Mother’s Day falls on the second Sunday of May, which means most teachers spend the week before working on projects to send home. The challenge is balancing the gift-making impulse with actual writing instruction — and the good news is you don’t have to choose between the two.

The best Mother’s Day writing activities use the same process as any strong informational or opinion writing unit: brainstorm, select specific supporting details, draft, revise, and publish. The difference is that the final product goes home as a gift, which gives students a real audience and a reason to care about the quality of their writing.

A few things that make Mother’s Day writing work for all students:

• Always offer the option to write about a mother figure or other important adult — not every student has a mom at home, and this small flexibility matters enormously
• Model the brainstorming process using your own mom before students work independently — it shows them what specific, meaningful details look like vs. generic ones
• Push for specificity: “My mom is kind” becomes “My mom leaves notes in my lunchbox on test days” — that’s the writing instruction hiding inside the holiday activity

Two ready-to-use Mother’s Day writing resources worth having in your May plans:

• World’s Best Mom Writing Craft — A ribbon-style craftivity with graphic organizer, multiple writing formats, and options for extended response. Makes a beautiful bulletin board display and a gift moms actually keep.
• My Mom is the Coolest Writing Activity — A second option with a different format, great for teachers who want variety across grade levels or for differentiation within the same class.

Both combine the writing process with a finished product that goes home as a meaningful gift. Neither requires a ton of prep or a huge investment in supplies.

Memorial Day — A Brief but Meaningful Pause

Memorial Day falls on the last Monday of May, which means the school week leading up to it is often short and scattered. Rather than treating it as a lost day, a brief Memorial Day lesson — a reading passage, a discussion prompt, or a short writing response about service and sacrifice — gives the holiday real weight without requiring a full unit.

This is also a natural moment to connect back to Veterans Day content from November, if you covered it. Students who wrote Veterans Day thank-you poems earlier in the year often have a stronger foundation for understanding the difference between the two holidays.

End-of-Year Activities That Actually Earn Their Place

For teachers who end the school year in May or early June, the last few weeks need activities that feel celebratory without abandoning rigor. These two are worth building into your May plans specifically because they do both.

Letters of Advice for Next Year’s Class

Have students write letters of advice to the incoming class — the students who will sit in their seats next year. This requires real writing: a clear purpose, an audience the student cares about, specific and useful advice rather than generalities, and a friendly letter format.

The letters also make a natural back-to-school bulletin board display for August. You can put them up before your new class arrives and let them read through the advice during the first week of school — which creates a lovely connection between one class and the next.

→ See the full activity: Advice to Help You Shine — End of Year Writing Craft

End of Year Memory Books

Memory books are one of the most versatile end-of-year activities you can use. Done well, they’re a genuine reflection activity — not just a scrapbook. Students revisit goals they set at the beginning of the year, document how they’ve grown, and practice the kind of self-assessment that builds metacognition.

Memory books also work beautifully in conjunction with student-led conferences. Students use their memory books as a reference point during the conference, walking parents through their progress and growth in a structured way. This gives conferences a student-owned format that’s more meaningful than a traditional parent-teacher meeting — and more manageable for you to facilitate.

→ See the full activity: End of Year Memory Book

Keeping the Math Going in May

May is when math instruction most commonly falls apart — not because teachers stop trying, but because the schedule gets fragmented by testing, field trips, and events. Daily math warm-ups are your best tool for keeping skills from slipping during this unpredictable stretch.

Word problem warm-ups that take 10–15 minutes at the start of the math block can hold ground on multi-step problem solving, fractions, and operations even when you can’t run a full lesson. May math word problems are available for grades 2 through 7 — grade-level sets that give you a consistent warm-up routine through the end of the year without extra planning time.

May Sub Plans — Because You Will Need Them

May is actually one of the highest-use months for sub plans. End-of-year meetings, professional development days, field trip chaperone situations, and the general chaos of the last stretch all create unexpected coverage needs. Having a ready-to-go May sub plan packet means you can hand it off without guilt — and without spending your evening scrambling.

The best May sub plans are self-contained, low-prep for the sub, and engaging enough that students stay focused without a familiar teacher in the room. Grade-level sub plan packets for grades 2–5 are available and designed exactly for this situation.

Tips for Finishing the Year Strong

Test completion doesn’t mean instruction ends. Once testing wraps up, you actually have some of the best teaching weeks of the year — no pressure, engaged students, and the freedom to go deeper on topics that got squeezed earlier. Use that window intentionally.

Student choice goes a long way in May. Passion projects, independent reading, and student-selected research topics all work well in the last weeks of school because students have more buy-in. The writing and research skills are the same — the topic just belongs to them.

Keep the routine as long as possible. The temptation is to loosen structure as summer approaches, but students actually do better with predictable routines through the last week. The daily read aloud, the morning warm-up, the writing block — hold those as long as you can. Structure is what makes the fun stuff feel earned.

Plan your last day deliberately. The last day of school is one your students will remember. A simple, structured activity — letter exchange, memory book sharing, class discussion about summer goals — gives the year a real ending rather than just a trailing off.