Anna Wells
Anna has an MA in Applied Linguistics and came into teaching via Schools Direct in 2013. She currently works at a primary school in Greater London as English Lead and aspires towards school leadership. She is a self-confessed football nerd and loves a good statistic…
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What are the best end-of-term activities to get you and your class through the final weeks of the summer term?
The end of the school year is nearly upon us-with staff and students tired from another year of upheaval, here are some ideas to keep you and your class motivated and inspired for the last few weeks of term.
The summer holidays are just around the corner and thoughts are turning to lazy days, catching up on sleep and seeing friends and family again. However, there are still the last few weeks to navigate!
During this time, children are often excited and looking forward to 6 weeks of no school, so they may need a little extra motivation. This is where this blog steps in to help you with some end-of-term activities to keep your class on track and entertained, as well as making great memories to sustain them until September!
Here are 5 activities that are linked to the curriculum and can be adapted to suit most primary age groups.
1. Create a yearbook
This may sound like an activity for school leavers only, but it can be adapted to any circumstance!
Yearbooks can be created from left-over exercise books in the stock cupboard and then customised by children to suit their personalities. Each double-page spread has a different theme, encouraging children to be as creative as possible, using some art skills along the way. Examples can include: cutting out jigsaw pieces with a friend’s name on and writing something great about them, creating a road and writing a memory from each year on road signs and writing a haiku about your favourite lesson.
Yearbooks encourage children to be reflective, whilst looking forward to what the next year has in store!
2. Launch a rocket
An activity that always goes down well with children, mainly for the end result!
Designing and building rocket threads in various scientific skills and encourages children to recycle by bringing in a plastic bottle from home.
- A class can be divided into groups to work on their designs
- Write predictions based on how far their rocket will travel.
- Depending on your time, children can adjust and improve their designs.
- A large amount of space is needed and also some thinking about which direction to fire the rockets – facing the car park often doesn’t go down very well!
3. Cooking up a feast
Cooking and food preparation is an important part of the DT (Design and Technology) curriculum but can often be neglected due to staffing and equipment issues.
End of term is the perfect time to fit in any cooking activities, as you can link them to wider school events and give a real purpose to your classroom activities. Children could make fruit lollies for sports day, sandwiches to take on a school trip or biscuits for parents when they come to school. Cooking is accessible for all children; above all, they love it!
4. Enterprising activities
If you are looking for an activity combining maths and English, teamwork and social skills, why not get children to create their own product?
Pupils could sell it at a school fair or after school one day. This works especially well with children in Upper key stage 2, but could definitely be adapted for younger learners too. Classes could go into competition with each other, advertising their products to the rest of the school through assemblies and drumming up support from parents.
Enterprise also teaches valuable skills such as teamwork and resilience, amongst others!
5. When all else fails…
You cannot beat a game of rounders!
Why not try some of these activities to make your end of term as fun as possible?
