The New Year is here. So many people have thought about, wrote down and discussed their new resolution. Most of those people are adults. What about the kids? If the new year is time for resolutions, time to improve on an aspect of one self then why not pose the question to the students? Here’s an idea for 2 part lesson:

Part 1: Students write an essay explaining their New Year’s Resolution. Use a word processing program that counts the words and give them the goal of 100 words. If you have a student that may be challenged with writing or expressing themselves, have them create a bullet-ed list. If they repeat the same thoughts or the same words in their sentences-that will make Part 2 even better.

Part 2: Using a word cloud site, such as Wordle, Tagxedo or ABCyawordcloud, copy the text from the word processing document and paste it in the text window in the word cloud site. From here the students can choose the color and type of font, arrangement of words, and shape of the word cloud. They will see that the more times they repeat a word, the larger it will appear in the word cloud.

When you are done, print it out for a fabulous New Year bulletin board display. If you direct the students to only create resolutions related to academia, revisit their word clouds at the end of the school year for a self-check if the goal was achieved.