When we return to a new year in school and approach the customary looking back and thinking forward rituals, here are a few models that might inspire reflection and creativity.

Google’s #Zeitgeist2013 shares trends relating to the stuff we searched.  You may also explore the Zeitgeists by categories.  Use the pull-down menu to shift to a global or country-specific focus.

Flocabulary presented its annual Year in Rap for 2013.

Time’s Top Ten of Everything 2013 surveys the the good and the bad of the past 12 months in 54 interdisciplinary categories that will easily inspire student debate and argumentative writing.  Pop Culture and Social Media present some particularly interesting rabbit holes!

Speaking of rabbit holes, Pinterest recently shared a list of 29 categorized boards, but largely extracurricular, Top Pins of 2013.  (Check out the History board for your students; share the others with your buddies.)

Tumblr reviews the year in an attractive array of Tumblr blogs covering news, food, fan art, the government shut-down and much more.

Among the news quizzes out there are:

Wall Street Journal offers a 2013 Business News Quiz

The Chicago Tribune shares a slide-show-driven Year in Review

My personal favorite, The New York Times Learning Channel’s Farewell, 2013, reviews while it quizzes and links back to related articles and obituaries. In fact,  clicking on the blank takes you to the original Times source for answer checking.

Also from the New York Times Learning Channel is this fabulous list of instructional Ideas for Reflecting on and Teaching About the Year That Was.

Infographics presented a strategy for graphically summarizing the year.

All this got me thinking about how students might create their own wrap-ups.

While these last infographic examples may not direct connect to your curricula, imagine how they might be adapted as creative student expressions challenging them to summarize, prioritize, analyze, organize data, defend arguments, and improve design and communication skills.

How might we inspire students to use infographic platforms or timelining templates or digital storytelling or publishing or slideshow or curation tools like Storify, or List.ly (used recently for the Edublogs Awards) or Pinterest to create a look back at such topics as: science breakthroughs, community news, their clubs, their own learning or reading journeys?