New Year 2024 Activities | New Year's Lessons for Middle School + High School

Are you looking for New Year's 2023 Activities for your students? Try these fun New Year's lessons for your middle school or high school students to start the year off right!

When you purchase this bundle, you'll receive:

1. New Year's Vision Board for Students
Looking for a fun activity for students to ring in the new year? Creating a vision board is a great way for students to set goals, gain inspiration, and prepare to have a great year! 

With this activity that is printable AND digital, students will work to reflect on their dreams, goals, interests, strengths, and growth areas. Then, they'll pick 3 goals and make a small action plan for each goal. Full examples are included for both the vision board and the action plan activity. I like displaying these around my room for students to see on a daily basis as they monitor and track their progress toward their goals. It would also be a fun idea to create a digital library of the vision boards on a Google site. 

When you purchase this product, you'll receive:

- Intro to what a vision board is + directions for students

- Brief instructions for students on how to insert pictures on their vision boards using Google slides, Canva.com, or PPT.

- Full digital version of product for sharing with students via Google Slides

- Example of student vision board + reflection guide

- Reflection guide for students for pre-planning

- Action plan graphic organizer

- 3 tips for students to reach their goals using their vision board

- Full editable version of product 

2. Creative Enneagram Activity | Know Yourself, Know Others - Build relationships!

The Enneagram is such an interesting, relevant topic and a great way to do an all about me activity. I love to use this to help students start the new year off right - it teaches them about themselves and others, in order to build stronger relationships. I love to have my students do a personality test so that I can find out more about them and they can learn about themselves! Currently, the Enneagram Personality Test has been flooding Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok! Why not have students learn while employing some modern, engaging material to keep them focused!?

This activity also prompts students to use their creativity to make an Enneagram graphic based on their type. 

This is a Google-ready activity so it's perfect for distance learning, too.

When you purchase this product, you'll receive a Google Slides presentation that can be shared with students which includes:

- A brief history of the Enneagram

- An overview of all numbers/types

- A link to an Enneagram test

- A link to explore their "type"

- A reflective activity

- A link to an article for further reading/reflection

- Instructions for creating an Enneagram graphic based on their type

- An example of the graphic 

3. Building Resilience and Overcoming Challenges this Year

This has been a difficult season for many of us - let's start the New Year off right by learning how resilience helps us, and how we can build it. Social-emotional learning is a crucial component of teaching our students. Sometimes, we have to explicitly teach our students how to overcome hardships and build resiliency. This packet on resiliency not only teaches students what it means to be resilient, but it also pushes them to develop language skills, reading comprehension, and reflective writing.

When you purchase this product you'll receive:

- A pre-reading sheet that covers vocabulary building and accesses prior knowledge

- An article on what resilience is and how we can build it within ourselves

- Real-world scenarios where students must read, think, and decide what a resilient reaction would be

- 3 Writing prompts that push students to think reflectively and utilize textual evidence

- 2 additional high-interest articles on celebrities who are role models of resilience (Shaquem Griffin and Rachel Hollis)

- Reflective reading guides for both role models of resilience articles

- Full answer keys/suggestions

- Instructions for how I use this product in my own classroom

4. New Year Reflection Journal

Start the near year out right! Encourage students to reflect on what they've learned in 2022, and the goals they want to accomplish in 2023. This ten-page booklet fits perfectly into composition books. Just print, cut, and staple! You can use the whole book, or simply print individual pages for students to use. This activity works beautifully for students of all ages, but the design of the booklet especially appeals to upper-middle grades and high school students. 

This booklet doesn't simply challenge students to think of a new year's resolution, but it also directs their focus on how they can become a better person and set attainable goals for 2023.

- 2 different cover options

- 10 cut and fold pages for students to use in order to "ring in the new year"!