Fun English Activities for Primary School Children

Does your class consider reading to be the pastime of the dull and antiquated? Is the word ‘grammar’ enough to set pupils’ heads nodding – with boredom as opposed to enthusiasm? If your class needs a motivational boost in the English department, read this article for some helpful suggestions that will help you to make English lessons more fun.

How to Make English Lessons More Fun

Making English lessons more fun involves increasing classroom engagement and using a range of channels to convey the subject matter in hand. This will boost children’s motivation and help open up their eyes to the endless opportunities that this rich subject has to offer.

Get creative. Arts and crafts offer a useful platform from which to deliver information in a manner that is appealing and manageable for young children. Photo sharing websites like Pinterest provide a great source of inspiration for everything from individual classroom activities to wall displays. How about getting children to complete a grammar flip book over the course of the term? Or creating VCOP tree and Synonym Roll wall displays to remind them of such concepts whenever their eyes take a wander around the classroom? Most children find complex information easier to digest when it’s presented in a more visual format.

Harness the power of song. Music is another powerful tool for delivering subject matter in a way that is fun an accessible to young children. You could get them singing songs for primary school with a literacy theme to consolidate their understanding of grammatical, lexical and semantic concepts. You could also read stories as a class using a mixture of song and verse using the songbooks in this series. Finally, you could look to exploit children’s natural appreciation of rhythm – I recommend the Pictures, Poems & Percussion series from the same company.

Embrace the digital age. The digital era has revolutionised learning and many young children now feel more at home with tablets and computers than with textbooks and printouts. While your school may not have the budget to provide individual computer access to each student, you could allow them to take it in turns to try out topical activities online while another classroom activity is in progress. BBC Bitesize is a great resource as it presents subjects in an interactive format that will appeal greatly to computer game lovers.

I hope you now have plenty of ideas up your sleeve that will help you make English lessons more fun. The key is to take a cross-curricular approach, incorporating a range of media to keep things interesting, engaging and current.

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