Sign In
Sign In
Register for Free
PrimaryHealth & Wellbeing

End of year activities – Fun ideas for KS1 and KS2

Primary school pupils running outside

Round off the summer term and give your class a fond farewell with these free ideas and activities for KS1 & 2…

Teachwire
by Teachwire
End of year bingo card
DOWNLOAD A FREE RESOURCE! Start or end of year bingo – Free download for schools
PrimarySecondary

It’s that time of the year when things start to wind down and loosen up. You still want the children to actually learn something, though. Here are some great end of year activities, resources and ideas to celebrate the school year, recap everything you’ve learnt and send the kids off into the summer holidays in style.

(If you’re looking for festive ideas instead, look at our Christmas activities round-up).


JUMP TO A SECTION


Year 6 end of year activities

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.

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? We’ve rounded up some great end of year activities and ideas for you.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Use Dr Seuss’ classic picturebook and this free activity pack to cover literacy and PSHE in UKS2. The activities 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

Introduce secondary subjects

English at secondary school Powerpoint - end of year activities

During lockdown, teacher Emily Weston asked a range of secondary teachers to create a short presentation introducing their subject, a topic from it and a short activity children can complete.


Transition activity sheet

End of year activities worksheet

This activity sheet helps Y6 children think about their current school, and the new one that awaits them in six weeks. They’ll think about similarities and differences between the two and things they’ll remember about primary. There’s also space to write about what they have achieved, things they would like to know about their new school, and what they are looking forward to.

For other year groups these transition book templates can be used with a range of structures to match the age/ability of your class.

Find the Year 6 activity sheets here and the transition books here.


Transition passport

End of year activities passport

This passport to Y7 allows Y6 children to write about themselves, reflect on their primary school successes and think about their new school.

Print the document as an A5 booklet and share it with Year 7 teachers to help them build relationships with your pupils.


Transition lesson plan

We all know that change can be difficult, and scary. 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. It takes around 45 minutes to an hour to complete.

You can download a PDF of the lesson plan and a couple of worksheets for the activities. These 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.


10 leavers’ assembly ideas

End of year activities assembly

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 and a Marvel superheroes theme. We love the fantastic ‘Class of 2100’ reunion. This puts a new spin on looking back on your time at primary. 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.


Career photo collage

This one shouldn’t take much effort, but it makes for a nice keepsake for you and your leavers. Have pupils write on a chalkboard what they want to be when they grow up. Next, take a picture then make a class collage with all the leavers on.


Create an end of year video

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.

Another option is to create your own lip-sync music video. Choose a song with some fitting lyrics. Next, shoot your own music video as a nice memory for your students (and teachers, of course).

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.

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.


End of year activities for all ages

End of year bingo

End of year activities bingo card

This free end of year bingo game will have kids having fun out of their seats trying to get the information from their classmates to fill in their card.

The rules are simple: children will find a classmate matching each description and write his/her name in the box. Kids can go ahead and fill in blanks they already know. Alternatively, they can wander around asking friends if they fit one of the characteristics. The first person to fill five in a row wins.

The download also contains a blank version so you can customise it for your class.


My School Superhero end-of-term writing activity

Who’s been a real superhero in your class or school this term?

As the year draws to a close, this free writing activity is an ideal way for children and adults to share positive feedback about each other. They can highlight things they’ve learnt and the progress they’ve made together for a truly uplifting wall or corridor display.


Reflection questions

Find all the secondary subject slides here and give Y6 pupils a comprehensive look at the Y7 curriculum.

End of year activities reflection questions

Getting children to reflect on everything they’ve learnt and achieved may be an obvious starting point, but that doesn’t mean you can’t save time by finding a pre-written list of questions to start yourself off. Like this one.

And you can also download them as task cards if you prefer.


Class word clouds

This end-of-year activity makes a great gift for kids to take away. Print out lists of everyone’s name in the class (yours included). Then get everyone to fill the sheet out using one positive word to describe each person.

Then input those answers into a word cloud generator and print out each child’s personalised page of positive traits.


Movie and popcorn day

No, we’re not suggesting you spend the last day handing the ‘teaching’ over to some DVDs!

This American resource has some great educational activities to go along with a fun day of turning the classroom into a cinema (only without the extortionate prices).


12 effective activities

School children smiling representing end of year activities

If you’re just after a simple list of ideas to try out then this post features 12 effective lessons and activities to teach at the end of the school year.


Survey and photo activity

It’s the end of the year, so the weather is hopefully nice and suitable for this activity. First, you get children to fill out this survey of their favourite things (which you can print off here).

Then you can all go outside and take a nice photograph of each of the children, before putting their survey answers over the pic on a computer.


Art activities

Hands-on, fun art activities will always go down a treat at the end of a school year. This list has a nice selection for you to choose from.


Maths ideas

There are some end of year activities for inside the classroom and out here. They include STEM challenges, a paper aeroplane contest and parachute testing (not real ones, thankfully). Or have a go at a pirate escape test or making a fractions chart.


Browse more end of term activities, this time aimed at secondary pupils, and plan ahead with these back to school activities.

You might also be interested in...