04/08/2026
Avoid These Seven Mistakes During Holiday Lessons
I want to tell you something that took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out.
For a few years, I thought the measure of a good school holiday programme was how much content it covered or how many hours students sat in front of me absorbing content.
I was busy. My students were busy. And at the end of it, the results were fine, but not the transformation parents had hoped for when they paid and sent their children to attend the lesson.
I started paying attention differently to what was working and more importantly, to what wasn't.
Here are 7 mistakes to avoid during holiday lessons
1. Turning Every Lesson into an Examination
Not every activity needs to end with a test.
Sometimes, a discussion, a game, a group activity, or a simple practical task can teach just as much.
You can take five minutes at the start. Ask how they're doing. Not just as a formality. Really mean it. Let them tell you what's hard in oral interaction instead of judgemental question on the board. Let them tell you what they're afraid of. Let them feel that your classroom is one where that kind of honesty is welcome.
They will feel safe three times faster than in a place where braced for judgment.
2. Running Lessons for Too Many Hours Without Real Breaks
Let me describe a timetable I have seen more than once.
Students arrive at 8 am. First subject runs until 10 am. Short break sometimes honoured, sometimes not. Second subject until 12 pm.
By the time 12 pm arrives, nobody in that class is genuinely learning anymore.
Long hours do not mean deep learning. They mean exhaustion disguised as diligence.
So, build your timetable around how long a child can actually concentrate, not around how many hours you need to fill to justify the lesson fees.
3. No Fun Activities
This is the one school owners and teachers defend most passionately:
"This is an academic programme. We are here to study, not to play."
And I understand that instinct. Parents paid for results, not entertainment. There is real work to be done.
But here is what the research says, and what any honest teacher already knows from experience: children learn faster, retain more, and engage longer when there is an element of enjoyment in the process.
A spelling competition is still spelling. A mathematics relay race is still mathematics. A group debate is still English language and critical thinking. A science experiment, even a messy, imperfect one done with local materials is still science.
Fun does not mean the opposite of learning. Have fun activities.
4. Setting Homework that Defeats the Whole Purpose
Picture this scene.
A child wakes up on a holiday morning. They attend your lesson from eight to twelve. They come home tired, eat, and then spend the evening doing the two hours of homework you set at the end of class. They sleep. They wake up and do it again.
That is not a holiday lesson programme.
That is a second school. And the students in it are not learning.
They are surviving.
Homework during holiday lessons should be light, purposeful, and genuinely useful. Ten focused practice questions, not forty. One short reflection exercise, not a three-page summary.
5. Treating the Holiday Lesson Like a Continuation of the School Term
This one quietly ruins everything else.
When students walk into your holiday class and see the same arrangement, the same routine, the same "copy this from the board" energy, something in them may switch off almost immediately. They already did this. For three terms. They are here because that wasn't enough, not because they want more of the same thing.
So, the holiday lesson has to feel different from the moment they walk in. A different pace. More conversation, less dictation. More problem-solving, less note-copying.
6. Talking Too Much and Listening Too Little
I know this one personally because it was my own worst habit for years. 😊
The holiday class is smaller. You have more time. You feel the responsibility of that time and so you fill it with explanations, examples, more explanations, and summaries of the explanations. You talk. And talk. And the students sit there looking attentive, while very little of it actually lands.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: a student who has not spoken in your class today has probably not learned very much.
Learning is not passive reception. It is an active construction. It happens when a child tries to explain something, gets it wrong, tries again, asks a question, argues a point, corrects, and draws a connection.
7. Forgetting That You Also Need Energy to Teach Well
I have seen school owners and teachers pack holiday timetables so tightly, four subjects a day, back to back, two teachers sharing one room, no proper break built in.
Build rest into your holiday programme for yourself and for your students. A mid-morning break that is actually observed. A day structured around group work so the cognitive load is shared.
The teacher who paces themselves, who rests, reflects, and comes back sharp produces better outcomes than the one who gives everything on day one and has nothing left by day five.
One Last Thought
The best holiday lessons don't feel like an extension of the school term.
They feel like a fresh experience.
One where children leave each lesson saying,
"I can't wait for tomorrow's class."
If your students leave with that feeling, you've done more than teach a lesson.
You've helped them enjoy learning.
Do you gain any value from this post?
The Mindful Educator
Teaching with insight. Guiding with understanding
