How to Plan a School Assembly

If you are a teacher of a certain age, you will remember the school assembly as a formal event at the beginning of the day, consisting of sitting on the floor in rows listening to the head teacher. After that you’d maybe sing some hymns and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Assemblies today tend to be much less rigid events with a greater degree of flexibility in terms of content and the time of day that they occur.

But what is the purpose of an assembly? What makes a good assembly? When should assemblies happen? How can you make sure your pupils get the most out of assemblies? Read on to find out.

Time of day and attendance

Many schools still hold an early morning assembly on a Monday, as this can be used to set the tone for the week, inspiring and engaging pupil interest before any lessons have started. Often a Thursday or a Friday morning ‘singing’ assembly will be timetabled in regularly. Times change however, and schools increasingly hold assemblies at different times of day to suit their needs more effectively than the 9am assembly!

Many schools timetable at least some of their assembly slots for the afternoon session, as the ever-increasing pressure to produce results at the end of Key Stage 2 means school leaders are reluctant to lose any core subject learning time in the mornings.

Assembly time is also increasingly being used to run intervention groups. Whilst it makes sense to withdraw a pupil from an assembly slot, rather than a lesson slot if they need some extra support, it is important to ensure that it is not the same pupils being withdrawn every time. 

Similarly, staff attendance is also important. It may be appropriate at times for staff not to attend assembly. For example, if it is Parent Consultation Evening, an assembly for the last 20 minutes of the afternoon will enable teachers to prepare their classrooms for parents to visit.

This should be the exception though, not the norm. Assemblies are for the whole school community, not just pupils. It is important for pupils to see staff attendance, as this reinforces the fact that assemblies are an event to be valued.

Purpose of school assemblies

The overriding purpose of an assembly is to help build and nurture a feeling of community that reinforces the culture of the school. It will focus pupil minds on issues of a moral or spiritual nature and promote a positive attitude. It should be memorable and leave pupils wanting to find out more about a particular subject.

There will be occasions during the school year when an assembly will be focused on an important event happening nationally – a D-Day assembly or Easter assembly, for example. There will be other times when an assembly is very much focused on events happening within the local community, such as a Harvest Festival assembly or your Year 6 leavers’ assembly.

These types of assemblies lend themselves quite easily to the points above about building a sense of community and promoting a positive attitude. They will, however, make up only a small number of assemblies. How then do you make sure your assemblies fulfil the brief for the rest of the year, and where do you find interesting ideas to make your assemblies fun and engaging?
 

Planning an effective assembly

Often, assemblies are used to share new learning with pupils that it may not be possible to shoehorn into an already crowded curriculum, introducing them to concepts and themes that they are unfamiliar with. This should be done in such a way that they are left inspired, wanting to know more.

Once you have an idea of the theme, message or learning that you want pupils to take away with them, think about how to best to introduce this.

You may decide to start with a story, maybe of an inspiring hero, or a villain who learns the error of their ways. It might be appropriate for you to begin with a personal anecdote from your own life, relaying your own experiences and what you learned from a situation before relating your experiences to those of your pupils.

On occasion, you will need to plan an assembly that launches a brand-new concept or idea for your school. This can be a great opportunity to impart important themes or messages at the same time. For example, if your assembly theme is centred around the fact that the school is working towards becoming an eco-school, then sharing a story or information around the topic of climate change or sustainability would be an appropriate theme to start with, rather than just talking about the eco-school programme and what it entails.

News and current affairs assemblies

The topic of news and current affairs is one that lends itself very well to many assembly themes, especially that of community values, and it works very well at getting pupils to participate. Depending on the size of your school, a news assembly may work better with individual year groups. That way, it is easier to ensure pupil participation and make sure the news stories covered are age appropriate.

With younger pupils, you could provide images of some news headlines. These could be local, national or international news stories. Ask pupils if they are familiar with each of the stories in turn. Allow pupils the opportunity to share what they know, interspersing that with what you have found out about the news item beforehand.

With older pupils, the format can be very similar but instead of supplying the headlines, the pupils can be forewarned about the subject of the assembly and asked to come to it with a current headline and some details about the story behind the headline. Headlines can be contributed at the start of the assembly and then discussed in as much detail as time allows.

More ideas

If you are stuck for assembly ideas, don’t worry – CGP+ has a multitude of ready-made PowerPoints for school assemblies. They are neatly organised into each month of the year and include topics such as religious festivals, social skills and environmental awareness.

To get started, simply download your chosen PowerPoint and then decide how you will use it as part of your assembly. The PowerPoints are great as they are but if you do wish to edit them to personalise them for your school, you can follow the easy steps in the CGP+ FAQs.

I have been a teacher for just over 22 years, working mainly in Upper Key Stage 2. More recently, I have worked with Key Stage 1 children as part of the National Tutoring Programme, which has been very enjoyable, giving me a great insight into younger children’s unique view of the world! I have always enjoyed writing resources but often did not have time as a full-time class teacher. Teaching part-time and writing for CGP+ offers the perfect balance.

To see CGP+ resources written by Cathy, click here.