Working within education jobs can sometimes feel like being an event planner. With our handy Education Calendar, you can plan well ahead for the Summer term.
Our ideas will help inspire you to bring each event to life, encourage learning, participation and discovery across specific themes.
The Summer Term
The Summer terms started the week commencing 19th April and can be a fun-filled term for students and teachers alike. There’s so much to get stuck into this term, events could take the form of an assembly, a virtual class, or an entire week of workshops, classes, decorations and group activities.
Our event listing will help teaching staff bring inspirational and engaging learnings to the classroom, especially helpful when faced with the recent challenges of schools connecting with pupils virtually.
Key Dates
When planning any event please ensure you comply with the latest government guidelines in regard to social distancing, the wearing of face coverings and the promotion of good hygiene. For more advice on the government’s COVID19 safety guidelines, click here.
National Walking Month 01/05/2021 to 31/05/2021
‘Walk This May’ is the perfect opportunity to encourage your pupils to get outside and raise money for children with cancer. Ideas for bringing this event to life in your school can be a sponsored walk, a treadmill challenge or walk to school for a whole week.
National Share a Story Month 01/05/2021 to 31/05/2021
From the Federation of Children’s Book Groups, this month of storytelling can provide the perfect opportunity to bring stories to life for your class. Try asking the children what their favourite story is and why, ask them to illustrate a chosen story or set a story writing competition.
Local Community and History Month 01/05/2021 to 31/05/2021
The aim of this month is to promote history in general and raise the pupil’s awareness of local history. You can do this with a historical dress up day, a virtual tour of a historical venue, or set up an online meeting with a historian.
Children's Book Week 03/05/2021 to 31/05/2021
This is an annual celebration to promote the joy of reading books for young people. How about trying a renewable spin on a book swap by asking your class to bring in books they no longer want to swap with others or hold a used book sale to raise money for a chosen charity.
Take part in this event to make maths count, increasing awareness and raising funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Register here for access to resources, ideas and tips.
National Doughnut Week 10/05/2021 to 16/05/2021
The Children's Trust, the UK’s leading charity for children with brain injury, brings you the chance to have fun, raise awareness and eat doughnuts. Set competitions for your class to draw your perfect doughnut, create the best or most unusual doughnut topping, or you could hold a bake sale to raise funds for the Children’s trust.
National Vegetarian week 10/05/2021 to 16/05/2021
The Vegetarian Society challenge you to go veggie for the plant. This event gives you the prospect of introducing the positive environmental impact of eating more vegetarian food.
Try swapping the school menu to veggie, only for the week. Educational projects such as Farm to Table, will help your class understand where their food comes from.
Walk to School Week 17/05/2021 to 23/05/2021
Designed to build children’s confidence in walking to school and promote the importance of walking to our health. Why not try a walking bus where children can make new friends as they walk and can experience the safety in numbers?
Schools Football Week 23/05/2021
This event from the English Schools Football Association (FA) doesn’t just have to be for the football mad. Inclusive ideas for everyone include design a football t-shirt, write a football song, design a trophy or make up your own cheerleading dance.
National Children's Gardening Week 24/05/2021
Celebrate how much fun growing plants and flowers can be by creating a garden space at school. If you don’t have enough space outside, then try an indoor kitchen garden or a windowsill herb garden.
This day can highlight not just world hunger and poverty, but also education and work opportunities, access to healthcare, social justice, the environment and climate change. Work with your class to help them understand sustainable solutions to world hunger.
Bike Week 30/05/2021 to 05/06/2021
Delivered by Cycling UK, this week showcases how brilliant it is to ride a bike. Try introducing a cycle to school challenge or cycling proficiency tests. Inclusive ideas for all include design the best bike and helmet or set a bike safety invention competition.
You can download this toolkit to inspire you. Why not turn your classroom into an underwater world with create an unusual sea creature project or ask the class to research marine conservation?
UK Clothing Poverty Awareness Day. 09/06/2021
Brought to you by Sharewear Clothing Scheme, the aim of this day is to raise awareness of how clothing poverty affects people across the UK. Challenge your pupils to work in teams to research, design, make and sell a sustainable product to raise funds for your school.
Wallace and Gromit’s Wrong Trousers Day. 19/06/2021
You could tie this in with the UK Clothing Poverty Awareness Day (see above), with a wacky trousers’ day. Request donations of trousers for the class to cut up, sew, decorate and create the very best wrong trousers for the head teacher to wear in assembly.
National School Sports Week 21/05/2021 to 27/05/2021
See their website for ideas to bring this event to life in your school, including wacky races, plank challenges and keepy uppys.
National Writing Day 24/06/2021
The #247 challenge from First Story, designed to inspire writers to create short stories or poems to share with others. There are lots of parent and teacher resources here.
A chance to show your support for the Armed Forces community. Check online for an organised event near you or hold your own picnic in the park. For more ideas to bring this event to life go here.
Children's Art Week 28/06/2021
Do you remember art attack? Here’s the chance to create a mural outside on the school field that when seen from above comes to life. You can even tie in with using recycled and upcycled items for the mural in conjunction with plastic free July (see below).
Plastic Free July 01/07/2021 to 31/07/2021
Find ways to challenge your pupils to reduce their plastic waste at home and in school. You can set a task to create something usually made out of plastic, out of something recyclable, or swap out the plastic in your lunchbox with inventive packaging initiatives.
Top Tips to bring these key dates to life in your School
There are so many celebrations and initiatives that you can get involved in throughout the Summer term, and with lots of resources listed above, hopefully you will find the perfect event for your class.
To create cross initiatives with your local community try contacting local charities, businesses, hospital, emergency services or council and suggest a collaboration.
Top Tips:
- Split the workload between classes to maximise the experience for all the children in your school.
- Why not try out some virtual events by organising an online call with an expert or do a virtual tour of a museum.
- Remember to be inclusive with a variety of options so everyone can get involved.
- Plan ahead so one initiative can provide the resources for another, e.g. clothing poverty donations and the wrong trousers day.
- To keep the events free and help out families in these difficult times, ask for an item donation instead of cash.
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