[Eric]

What do you do with your classes when you just want to have fun and not study? We have an end-of-semester party coming up and I need some ideas.

[little sage]

Play games, Eat, or both.

On fun days I like to bring in board games, the Pictionary board is fairly colourful, for example. Since the cards included in the actual games are usually too hard for my kids, I use the cards from the book we are studying, or an easier level and play with those. As long as they are rolling dice and drawing, it doesn't feel like a study session for them.

One really fun day I bought a huge tub of cheap ice cream and several flavours of soda pop, and made ice cream floats for everyone. The kids thought I was nuts, they had never seen anyone put those two ingredients together before .


Have fun with your parties! Let me know what games or activities you come up with.

[Eric]

ice cream floats, thats sounds awesome! thanks little sage.

[little sage]

Need i say Better in summer? The winter version might be cocoa with marshmallows if you could bring a kettle to class. Sounds dangerous though....

[Pix]

There are so many things you can do to reward your students at the end of the term... you might even be able to "sneak in" some learning if you have a cache of educational games available for them to choose from.

Some things that you might want to consider doing are setting up several different types of games and letting the students choose which ones they want to play during the class period.

Of course, most students do like the "food" reward as well. I've even heard of teachers ordering in pizza if the class is around meal time -- the students love it because it's something that rarely happens in the classroom.

[livinginkorea]

I usually have a party on the last day. As I have so many classes (3rd to 6th grade) I arrange to buy the drinks as long as the kids buy some snacks to share with each other. I show them some movie in English, with Korean subtitles and presto! Kids and I are happy to have a laugh for the entire class. Nice way to finish off the term as I don't show them any movies during the year.

[emile]

If you have a multicultural class, you can get them to bring in traditional food and costumes and stuff. They always seem to love that.

If your end of semester is around halloween, you could have a fancy dress competition. Hell, you could have one anyway, halloween or not.