New Year Reflection with Polls and a Quiz

The plan

Look back: what did we learn?

Start with a few polls about the term that just ended. A poll has no right answer and no points, so students can be honest about what stuck and what did not.

• “Which topic from last term do you feel most confident about?” with the topics as answers.
• “Which topic would you most like to go over again?” The same list.
• “How do you feel about this subject now, compared with September?” Much better, a bit better, the same, a bit worse.

The second poll is as useful to you as to them. In this class, half the room wanted ratio again, which settles what the first review lesson of January should be about.

Students also see that they are not the only one who found something hard, which makes asking for help a little easier for the rest of the year.

Two word clouds

Switch a poll to typed answers and the board shows a word cloud, with the most common words largest. Two of them make a lovely pair:

• “Describe last year in one word.”
• “Choose one word for what you want this year to be.”

Show them one after the other and talk about the difference. When the first cloud says “stressful” and the second says “calm”, the class has just told you what it needs, and every student had a say in it.

Goals that get kept

Ask the class what they most want to get better at this term, with a handful of answers such as speaking up more, handing homework in on time, understanding the hard topics and doing better in tests. The results show what most of the class is aiming for, which makes the goal feel shared rather than imposed.

Then turn the goal into a plan. Most new-year resolutions fail because they stay vague. Psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pulled together nearly a hundred studies of “implementation intentions”, plans written in the form “when this happens, I will do that”, and found they made people noticeably more likely to reach their goals than goals alone.

Students write their own plan on paper and keep it. The poll starts the conversation; the private plan is the one they own.

A quiz about the class

End with something fun: a quiz about the class’s own year so far. Questions only this group can answer make everyone laugh and remember.

Add photos from the year if you have them, with permission, and without showing any student who would rather not be shown. Set every question to no points: the aim is remembering together, not winning. With nothing at stake, nobody minds being wrong, and every reveal becomes a story.

Save it for June

Give the game a name when it ends, such as “8B, January”, so it is easy to find later. In June, run the confidence poll again and put the two charts side by side, and ask the class whether they kept their if-then plans. A class that moved from “a bit worse” towards “much better” has had a good year, and seeing it on the board is one of the most rewarding moments you can give them. Both kinds of poll are covered, with pictures, in the Giga Quizzes guide to every question type.