Looking Back, Moving Forward: 6 Practical Classroom Activities for the New Year

The start of a new year is always a wonderful opportunity to pause, reflect and set/reset goals and priorities for ourselves and our learners, that’s why my first back-to-school lessons after the Christmas break have always focused on that. In the past, I’ve leaned more heavily on goal-setting and looking ahead (you can read my previous posts here and here), but as I grow older, I’ve come to realize that the pressure to plan an ideal future can sometimes overshadow the chance to celebrate the achievements, milestones and precious moments that the past year has blessed us with. For this year’s lessons, this realization inspired me to create activities that strike a balance between looking and planning ahead and reflecting on what we’ve already achieved.

Whether you are looking for ways to embrace self-kindness or simply want to start the year with a positive mindset, here are six practical activities you can use with your learners that can be easily adapted to suit different levels and needs:

The “Reverse Bucket List”:  Instead of focusing on things your students want to accomplish in the new year, ask them to reflect on last year’s achievements they’re proud of. You can give them prompts such as “A healthy habit I’ve formed”, “A fear I’ve overcome” or “A new skill I’ve learned” or let learners brainstorm their own accomplishments which they can group into different categories. You can then ask them to think about new goals that they could build upon their existing achievements. To take the activity a step further, students can create digital stories by selecting a number of achievements and presenting them in a story sequence.

Moments of Gratitude: Many times in the excitement of making plans for the new year, we forget to appreciate the constant sources of balance and happiness in our lives. To help remind yourselves and your learners of that, you can create a paper (or digital) “Moments of Gratitude” poster where learners share on sticky notes things they’re grateful for in their lives. You can also turn this activity into a Gratitude Calendar for the month of January, with each day dedicated to something students appreciate about themselves or their lives.

Celebrating My Strengths: In the spirit of anti-resolutions, invite your students to focus on aspects of themselves they don’t want to change and ask them to celebrate their strengths and unique traits. The same activity can also be extended to include a list of habits, routines or mindsets that students want to keep because they work well (e.g. What am I already doing that brings me happiness and success?). This activity can also be extended to a creative writing task where learners write a letter of appreciation to their present self, focusing on self-kindness and acceptance. If your learners love art, you can turn the task into a “Strength Portrait” craft where students create a self-portrait surrounded by adjectives, phrases or quotes that represent their personal strengths.

Self-Care Bingo for the New Year: One of my favorite activities (although it requires a bit more preparation) is designing a Self-Care Bingo card filled with activities that focus on self-care and self-kindness. Examples of activities might include “Take regular breaks during your day”, “Write a thank-you note to yourself,” or “Celebrate a small win.” You can provide some of the activities on the card yourself and ask your students to add their own. The goal of the Bingo card is for learners to either complete a row (or a set number of rows, depending on what you have decided with your class) or a full card by the end of the month.

Simple Joys Jar: As I mentioned earlier, I feel it’s crucial to remind both my learners and myself of the simple moments of joy that bring meaning to our daily lives, instead of solely focusing on large-scale goals for the year ahead. I love using jars for reflective purposes, but as part of this year’s New Year activities I plan to ask my learners to fill a jar with notes about the small, everyday things that bring them happiness (e.g. reading a good book, enjoying a beautiful sunrise/sunset, listening to my favourite music etc.). At the end of each lesson, we’ll draw one note from the jar to reflect on for the rest of the week.

My Personal Dictionary for 2025: One-Word Resolutions have been around for a while and I have blogged about them before. This year I’m thinking of extending the idea into a “Personal Dictionary” activity where learners choose as many words as they can for each letter of the alphabet (or statements if they can’t think of individual words) or words that reflect their aspirations for 2025. Students can write a short paragraph about why certain words (or all words) are important to them and also turn their lists into a paper or digital collage, blending words with images, symbols, or drawings that represent their chosen words’ meanings.