8 of the best primary school leaver activities, ideas and resources
Send your Year 6s off in style this summer…
While all transitions have their inherent issues, there’s something unique about the leap from primary to secondary.
Your Year 6 leavers will go from being the biggest and oldest children in a comparatively small school, to being the littlest and youngest in a much bigger setting.
Their journey to and from school may be longer, they’re thrown in with a whole group of new peers from various other schools, and they will have more distinct subjects all timetabled out. There’s a lot to take in.
And, of course, you want to prepare them for the expectations of secondary school, but you want to do so without scaring the living daylights out of them.
In fact, you want to have them looking forward to what’s to come, as well as giving them a fond sendoff they’ll remember.
So if you’ve been busy preparing for the end of the school year and haven’t had much of a chance to think about seeing the little scamps off to secondary after the summer, we’ve rounded up some ideas and activities for you.
1 | Oh, the Places You’ll Go
Use Dr Seuss’ classic picturebook to cover literacy and PSHE in UKS2, with activities that would make the perfect project for Year 6 leavers, giving them a chance to:
- Articulate their hopes and ambitions, and identify some of the attitudes, behaviours and skills they might need to achieve them
- Enjoy a shared reading-for-pleasure experience and build on it
- Interrogate text and pictures to extend their understanding and discover different meanings
- Explore aspects of challenge, opportunity and change through drama, creative writing and art
- Develop their understanding of story structure
- Gain insight into their own emotions and those of others
- Explore quotations and choose one they find meaningful
2 | Help prepare them for change
We all know that change can be difficult, and scary, so this resource is ideal for putting your students at ease with their impending transition.
It’s an activity from Mind Moose, a digital platform that helps children maintain good mental health and wellbeing, that takes around 45 minutes to an hour.
You can download a PDF of the lesson plan and a couple of worksheets for the activities, which include things like getting children to write a timeline of their lives, to see how much change they’ve already experienced, and how it made them feel, and grow.
All of this is available free, with no sign-up, here.
3 | Ten ideas for leavers assemblies
If you’re after something a bit different for this year’s celebrations, this top 10 list of ideas for your leavers assembly has some corkers.
There’s a Harry Potter sorting hat activity, a Marvel superheroes theme where your school’s ‘Agents of SHIELD’ write dossiers on each child’s superpowers, and a fantastic ‘Class of 2100’ reunion which puts a new spin on looking back on their time at primary but having the kids dress up as their 90-year-old selves to reminisce about their time in education and what they went on to achieve in life.
4 | Funny and heartwarming end-of-year celebration videos
If you’ve been so caught up in the end-of-year shenanigans that you’ve not had time to think of the best send-off for your class we’ve rounded up some fantastic school dance routines, songs and celebrations that can inspire your own fun and games.
There’s inspiring poetry, paper waterfalls and the hilarious charm of kids talking about what they think you do over the summer.
Check out all the videos here.
5 | Career photo collage
This one shouldn’t take much effort, but it makes for a nice keepsake for you and your leavers. Have them write on a chalkboard what they want to be when they grow up, take a picture, then make a class collage with all the leavers on.
It’s a nice and straightforward idea, but you can find out more here.
6 | Lip-sync music video
This is a fairly staple idea in the age of YouTube and iPhones. Choose a song with some fitting lyrics, and then shoot your own music video as a nice memory for your students (and teachers, of course).
7 | Record your own lyrics
An alternative spin, of course, is to write your own lyrics for the children to sing over the top of a well-known hit. And this video gets extra points for weaving in snippets of the kids talking about what they want to be when they grow up.
8 | Make a mini-movie
If you’re looking for something a little different to the old song-and-dance routines, why not get your Year 6s to film a mini movie. Check out this one from Earlsmend Primary for inspiration.
