Emily Drabble discusses in her article for The Guardian some resources that teachers can use to teach their students how to set new goals this New Year.
It might not be the beginning of a new academic year, but January offers everyone a new start and an opportunity to reflect and refocus.
The Guardian Teacher Network has resources to help guide young people to make the most of the season, set new targets for themselves and work on a positive 2013.
Primary school teachers can make a great start by decorating their classrooms with a colourful resolutions banner.
Now to work on what these resolutions might be. The teachers behind My Treaure Trove have created the perfect vehicle with this uplifting New Year PowerPoint to help younger children reflect on their achievements in the past year and look forward to the next. All the slides are very sweetly written in rhyming couplets.
What would children like to improve? What new skills would they like to learn? Where would they like to go? This simple presentation provides a great opportunity for children to focus and feel good about the year ahead.
For extra suggestions on whole-class resolutions, from no shouting out to avoiding bad moods, try pinning up some of these motivational posters to reinforce some essential classroom management. For the staff room, try Keep Calm and Teach On.
This useful wall planner from Think Global gives important dates in the world calendar, providing inspiration for the remainder of the academic year.
Healthy eating and keeping fit is top of most people's resolution list. Looking after Ourselves is a chance for key stage 1 and reception-aged children to think about and discuss the importance of healthy lifestyles and ways in which we take care of our bodies.
A good breakfast is the start of any healthy eating plan. What makes a good breakfast? from the charity Magic Breakfast explores why and how. Pupils can fill in this breakfast diary during the first week back at school. Health for Wealth is a brilliantly detailed plan written by two Scottish teachers that gives schools all the information they need to set up a healthy tuck shop as a social enterprise project. Learn about good and bad fats or make a great salad with Jamie Oliver. Primary school children can investigate healthy eating in healthy and happy, an excellent resource from Wayland.
This new year passport is a nice induction for the new year, or something to save for the new academic school year.
Older pupils can look back on the past year and reflect on what they have taken from it and what has stayed with them in this powerful and imaginative Poetry Class Free Writing resource by poet Dorothea Smartt. The lesson plan and worksheets were commissioned by the Poetry Society to encourage writing from experience with fluency and confidence, followed by editing.
More cooperation sounds like a wonderful New Year's resolution for us all. There are some great ideas on how to improve student engagement and achievement in this resource on cooperative learning, which gives tips on how to best group students and manage cooperative learning sessions for maximum success.
If your students or children have been angered by the year's injustices, then they should enter their articles or photographs in the Amnesty Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year Award. Find an introductory lesson and a human rights article planning sheet.
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