Back To School Reset – Keep It, Change It, Bin It, Ask For It! – FREE

Back to School Reset – Reflect, reset and refocus for the year ahead.

About This Resource

Our Back to School Reset is a simple, low-pressure reflection activity designed to help ease children and teens back into the school year. Instead of focusing on big resolutions or unrealistic goals, students are encouraged to look at what they already know about themselves and decide what they want to take forward into the new school year.

Using four straightforward prompts – Keep It, Change It, Bin It and Ask For It – students can reflect on what worked, what didn't and what might make school a little easier this year.

It's quick enough to use at the beginning of a lesson or form period, while still creating opportunities for meaningful reflection and discussion.

The Four-Part Reset

•  KEEP IT: What are you keeping from last year? Students identify routines, habits, relationships, approaches or other things that worked well and are worth carrying forward.
• CHANGE IT: What are you changing this year? An opportunity to identify something they could approach differently to make school work better for them.
• BIN IT: What are you leaving behind? Students consider habits, worries and pressures that weren't helping them and that they don't want to carry into the new school year.
• ASK FOR IT: What are you going to ask for? Encourages students to think about the help, support or changes they may need rather than feeling they have to manage everything themselves.

This activity gives students permission to recognise what was already working, acknowledge what wasn't, let go of some of the pressure they may be carrying and think about what support could help them moving forward.

Benefits

The Back to School Reset can help students:

• Reflect on the previous school year without dwelling on it
• Recognise their existing strengths and successful strategies
• Identify realistic changes they would like to make
• Consider habits, worries or pressures they would like to leave behind
• Think proactively about the support they may need
• Encourage help-seeking and self-advocacy
• Reduce the pressure to completely reinvent themselves
• Start conversations about wellbeing, school experiences and support
• Approach the new school year with greater self-awareness

How to Use

Give each student their own copy and allow some quiet time to work through the four sections.

There is plenty of open space within each area, so students can write words, sentences, bullet points, doodle or mind-map their thoughts rather than having to complete the activity in one particular way.

It can be kept completely personal, used as the basis for paired or group discussion, or shared with a trusted member of staff where appropriate.

You could also revisit completed Reset sheets later in the term and ask students whether anything has changed.

Suggested Uses

Perfect as a first-week-back activity, but it can also be used following a school holiday, at the beginning of a new term, during transition, in form time, PSHE lessons, pastoral sessions, mentoring, counselling or one-to-one support.

It could also work well with students who have had a difficult previous school year, are returning following a period of absence, are experiencing school-related worries, or simply need an opportunity to reset without the pressure of traditional goal setting.

Perfect For:

Secondary schools • Form tutors • PSHE • Pastoral teams • Heads of Year • SENCOs • Teaching assistants • Mentors • Counsellors • Alternative provision • One-to-one support