English Fun Days For Young Learners

Young Learners can be both a blessing and a curse to teach. Always enthusiastic, up for anything, they can be a dream to teach. At the same time they need constant stimulation and attention. This means that as a Young Learner teacher you need to be on your toes when teaching, ready with games, songs and fun ideas for the classroom. While there are many activities that you can do in the classroom, why not undertake a more ambitious project and plan an English Fun Day?

What are English Fun Days?

English Fun Days are days when games and activities that are conducted in English are planned for the whole day. Think of it as a funfair for English, except all the activities are geared towards learning English. This is done by choosing a theme for the day. This should relate to a topic done recently by the class; for example, transport or food or personality.

Then games and activities need to be chosen that can be utilized as learning opportunities. This can include Bingo, ball games, quizzes, flashcard games, arts and crafts, films – anything you can think of. Each activity can be set up in its own area so the students are free to walk around and play whichever game they want.

How can I organise an English Fun Day?

English Fun Days are especially effective if you are able to combine classes and set up in a big area such as a hall or an outside area. Students enjoy the fact that they are able to mix with their friends in other classes. It makes it feel less like an English lesson or more like a fun day out. An added bonus would be if you organise food and drink stalls as well, or tell the students they are allowed to bring their own snacks.

Of course carrying out an event like this means that you will need to enlist the help of other teachers to help with the organization, and assistants or older students to help run the activities. You will need to ask your school for permission and schedule a day for this long in advance. If you don’t have the approval of the principal, director or subject head, there is little chance the day will be a success.

When you have been given all the relevant permission, tell the students so that they can get excited for the day (but don’t tell them until you are 100% sure it’ll happen!). You can spend time in a lesson creating posters or flyers advertising the Fun Day which can be stuck around the classrooms involved or around the school.

Why should I plan an English Fun Day?

This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? It is, but it’s for a good cause. Your students will enjoy learning at the Fun Day because they will be engaging in fun activities and they won’t even realise they are learning. Taking the students out of the classroom is beneficial to both students and teachers and doing a Fun Day can help disrupt the monotony of routine and it can make you a very popular teacher!