There are so many ways to celebrate New Year’s in ELA, reflecting on how the New Year fits into our lives.The choose-your-word take. The pick-your-theme-song-take. There are SMART goals and stepping stone goals, personal goals and professional goals. Then of course there’s the gentle twist that takes goals and turns them into habits and then stacks them, á la James Clear.
But what – she said with a gentle chuckle – about sneaker goals?
Yep, today I’d like to offer you a little twist on the whole goal smorgasboard. Celebrate New Year’s in ELA with an activity that helps students reflect on what they want from the coming year. This is an activity your students can do this week as you return to school that will help them think through what they want from next year in a serious way, with a lighthearted frame.
They’ll create vision boards… on sneakers. Paper sneakers.
(You can grab all the free curriculum to go with today’s podcast right here!)
Let’s go.
How to Get Started with Your New Year’s Vision Board
For this activity, students start by choosing a shoe template that appeals to them. You’ll want to have copies of all the different types so they can choose.
Pop up the model I made as a demo, or make one of your own to share, so they get an idea of the project. Of course, after you do it once, you’ll have more exemplars to share with your next group of students.
At this point, you should decide whether you’re going to ask students to display the vision boards on the wall, invite them to privately stick them in their notebooks or binders when you’re done, or let them choose. It’s best if kids know going into a personal project like this whether anyone else will be seeing it.
Guiding them through the New Year’s Vision Board Template
I made the template instructions editable, so you can feel free to tweak it. But my goal was to walk them clearly through a process where they’d consider what they want from this next year from different angles. What do they want school to be like? What do they want outside of school? What’s a guiding word that they could focus on? What type of energy are they looking for – the calm of greens/blues/purples on their vision board, or the vibrant energy of reds/oranges/yellows? What could be their theme song? What could be a quotation they come back to?
The directions walk them through considering each of these aspects of the coming year, explaining their vision in the sections behind the shoe while adding small details to the shoe itself to represent what’s most important to them.
Once Students complete their New Year’s Vision Boards
Once your students have wrapped up their projects, follow through on whatever you announced at the beginning – either you can create a display, invite students to place the vision boards in the inside cover of their notebooks or their binders, or give them the option to do either one.
Whatever you choose, consider adding a reminder in your Google Calendar to invite students to revisit their vision boards once or twice as the school year continues.
Grab the Free Download: The New Year’s in ELA Vision Board
Don’t forget, you can grab the play by play for your students right here!
