Leavers Day Ideas for Primary School Teachers
Make the Last Day of School a Special and Memorable Occasion for All
As the end of the school year approaches, primary school teachers everywhere are dutifully toiling away in preparation for the last few days of term. If you want to do something extra special for your year 6 class this time around, these leavers days ideas will arm you with a wealth of top tips and inspiration.
Leavers Assembly Ideas
For a leavers assembly to be successful, it must be both fun and touching, with just the right combination of jokes and tear-jerkers. It should give year 6 children a good send-off with plenty of excitement and a strong take-home message to help ease them onto the next stage.
It’s important to bear this in mind as you prepare your speeches and pick out any leavers songs to sing on the day.
So you might start off on a fairly sombre note with a brief preamble about some of the challenges that change can bring about, then go on to reminisce about the good times you have had with your year 6 class.
You could even include a presentation or photo story showing how they have progressed over the years, accompanying the pictures with any songs that are of particular significance to them. This can then be emailed out to parents or presented to each child as a hard copy, as a kind of modernised yearbook to remind them of the good times they had at primary school.
Remember to keep things light-hearted with plenty of jokes, and include interactive leavers songs and activities to keep the children on their toes and reinforce the messages that you are trying to convey.
If you have enough time, you could even prepare a leavers production of some kind. Refer to a prewritten script, adapting it to include a few in-jokes from your school, or get the children to devise one of their own.
Here are some popular ideas for leavers day assemblies:
- Get your class to dress up as elderly folk and act out a scenario in which forty years have passed by and they are at a school reunion. What are they like now? What have they done with their lives? What have they learned?
- Work with your class to write a song or rap about their time at school, including a group chorus together with individual verses. Don’t be afraid to be a bit cheeky provided you do so in a sensitive manner; after all, everyone expects a bit of banter on leavers day.
- Do your own version of Britain’s Got Talent. This is a great way to highlight each child’s personal skills and accomplishments, and any children who don’t want to perform can act as judges – look to Ant and Dec, or even Simon Cowell, for inspiration.
For more inspiration, check out Chloe Darracott-Cankovic’s leavers assembly suggestions for TES.
Other Activities for Primary School Leavers
Hold a leavers disco or prom. Hire a local DJ, decorate your school hall or community centre with banners and balloons, and depending on your budget, hook up some disco lights for a professional touch. Organise a buffet of posh snacks and mocktails, and get each parent to bring a dish to the table. You could even tie in a karaoke, ceilidh or fancy dress competition.
Organise a leavers trip. Popular choices for school outings include theme parks, safari parks, bowling alleys, laser quest and outdoor activity centres. If you feel that such activities might stretch some families beyond their means, a class picnic or BBQ followed by a good, old fashioned water fight on your local sports ground will go down just as well.
Ask the children for suggestions, make a list of any popular (and feasible!) leavers day ideas they come up with and hold a class vote before arriving at a final decision. After all, this is their special day and they deserve to be treated as grown-ups. What more could a year 6 leaver want than that?