Happy New Year and New Year's Resolutions

I always enjoy starting the New Year in my Spanish classes. By now, the students have gotten to know me, and I have a relatively good sense of their abilities and personalities. One activity that I like to do to start-up the New Year is New Year's Resolutions. I have designed this quick one page activity for my Spanish 2 and Spanish 3 students, but sometimes, I also use it for AP in order for them to have a nice review. You can find this activity free here!

I have students write their resolutions for the year in the future tense, which allows them to both review this tense, and hopefully remind them how to use their Spanish skills that have not been practiced for a few days. I do not require my students to write resolutions about a specific class or even school at all, if they do not wish to, because I want this activity to be as authentic as possible. If I force students to write a resolution about something they are not actually going to accomplish or even interested in accomplishing, I have diminished the value of the activity. The one stipulation that I do ask of students is to complete the second question, which asks students to specify when they will have completed each activity. This question is purposefully designed to have students use the future perfect. While I recognize that many students may not have thought about when they will actually accomplish their goals, numerous studies have shown that people who have a clear time frame as to when they will complete an activity are more likely to accomplish the task than people who are more general about their goals. Depending on the class, and the importance of character education in your school, you may wish to find an article on the internet which discusses this important aspect of goal-setting.

By now, if you have been reading this blog often enough, you know that I never want to miss an opportunity for my students to speak and share in a manner that is as authentic as possible. So, once the students have completed the first two questions, I ask them to choose one of their resolutions to share with their classmates. I purposefully do not request that the students share all of their resolutions because some of them may have included resolutions that are personal, and I want to respect this process. Finally, after speaking with each other, I have each student choose the one that he/she thinks was the best one in the class. As a whole class, I have the students share the resolution that they thought was the best.

To complete the remainder of the class, I am going to talk to my students about the Spanish New Year's tradition involving the 12 uvas. Then we will jump into our new units and projects for the New Year!

¡Feliz y prospero año nuevo a todos!