Important life skills activities for 25 high school students

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High school students like to ask, “When did I use it in real life?” When you teach life skills like financial literacy, time management, and socio-emotional understanding, they no longer need to ask this question!

Use these low PREP life skills activities for high school students who are only a few years (or even months!). From analyzing friendships to balancing budgets, they will surely find opportunities to use these courses in real life.

Activities to understand friendship and relationships

Teens spend a lot of time with their friends, but that doesn’t mean they have the socio-emotional skills they need to navigate these relationships. Use these activities to develop social skills for high school students, which they use for a long time after leaving the classroom. They also made high school icebreakers in the first week of school!

• Introduce a positive listening challenge. Two volunteers (students or teachers) were asked to play a conversation that included body language changes and minor conflicts. Have the classroom analyze what they hear from the conversation, or have them choose someone to replace themselves to resolve the conflict.
• Practice conflict resolution time travel. Tips for having students write to high school journals to understand the conflicts they have and see if anyone is willing to share their conflicts. If that is not the case, brainstorm a general conflict list and discuss how to resolve each conflict in different time frames.
• Play collaborative games. Instead of making team projects and games competitive, look for competitive games for your students to play. A popular option is a communication chain where students follow the subject order they agree to (e.g. birth order, alphabetical order of names, or height).
• Stay fast and friendship round. Break the old friendship mode in the class with a quick friendship round. Have students spin around the classroom and have a two-minute conversation with as many peers as possible, asking questions that will help them understand each other better.
• Organize a community service project. Address multiple life skills when organizing a service program to help the community. Popular community service ideas for high school students include community cleanup, basic reading courses, and community gardens.

Participate in activities to manage time and learn skills

Time management and learning skills are at the forefront when it comes to important high school life skills. Use these useful time management activities for high school students to allow learners to expect to deal with any upcoming challenges.

• Assess students’ executive function challenges. Learn what students know about current skills through discussions about the challenges of common research. See how many students struggle with procrastination, distraction, and time management, and how they think about changing their current habits.
• Introduce planners and schedules. Planners are an easy and ideal way to solve the learning skills of high school students! Print a schedule template or use a school-issued planner to help students plan short- and long-term projects and upcoming tasks.
• Assign timed group items with priority. How much can a group project be completed in a course? Assign quick projects to teams or pairs and encourage students to prioritize before completing projects.
• Write a 24-hour schedule. Help high school students see how they can really schedule a full day on a schedule. Have them write down their spending every minute, including their sleep time, scroll on social media, chat with friends or complete other activities. Students can then decide how to reorganize their time.
• Find out what it feels like for a minute. Can your high school student tell how long a minute really takes? Tell them to close their eyes when they think a minute has passed. Note how many students raise their hands too early or too late and discuss how hard it is to track the passage of time without tools like timers or schedules.

Financial literacy skills activities for teenagers

Most adults agree that financial literacy is one of the most important life skills adolescents learn before graduation. Introduce high school students to combine economic skills and high school life skills.

• Model needs and requirements. Therefore, many financial decisions can be incorporated into these two categories! Have students create two columns that include what they want and what they need. Then, a discussion is conducted on how students can make sure they meet their actual needs before solving what they need.
• Practice budget. Distribute budget templates, list of budget line items (including rent, utilities, groceries and other items) and current market prices. As students or individuals are formed, students then plan a budget and determine how much they need to make to live independently on their current budget.
• Showcase the classroom tax system. Imagine a generation of students know how to submit taxes before working! Use sample federal income tax returns and sample jobs and income to give students experience the task of submitting first tax.
• Instructions on credit card and credit score. Perfect for math classes, economics departments or life skills for high school students, credit card activities tell students how all credit cards and credit scores work. According to the sample credit card statement, bring them and how much interest will be generated based on the speed (or slow) of their assumption balances.
• Tuition and financial aid from the Institute of Research. Sending students to colleges and using the knowledge required for activities regarding college tuition and financial aid. Have students study the average cost of attending a range of colleges, including out-of-state universities, state schools, and local community colleges. Then introduce the free federal student aid application (FAFSA) and discuss how financial aid and interest rates work.

Helpful health and personal care activities for high school students

In typical teenagers’ lives, everything is changing, including their bodies. Include life skills activities for high school students to discuss their health and personal care needs to help them take care of themselves.

• Set personal care goals. Ask students if they have aspects of their own want to change their lives, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, or any other personal field. Give them measurable ways to change these habits and then have them set a month’s goal to understand how they succeed.
• Write a script to make an appointment. If your high school student hasn’t yet gone to the doctor without a parent, then now is a good time to study. Create a sample script in the classroom for students to see a doctor and add questions about reproductive care and hygiene that they may be too embarrassed to ask with their parents.
• Let teenagers track their sleep. Most teenagers don’t have enough sleep, although they are reluctant to admit it. Have them track their sleep over a week using a personal device, such as a smartwatch or cell phone, or distribute paper schedules to them to record their sleep time each night.
• Play teenage care bingo. Use a blank bingo card to let students mark with healthy methods such as “eat fruits and vegetables” and “exercise regularly.” Read your habits discussed in class and see who can score the fastest in a row!
• Change a dietary habit. Whether it’s full breakfast or changing the soda for water, high school students in the class may need to improve their eating habits. Ask them to make a consistent change for only one week and then monitor how it feels after the switch.

Plan career skills activities in advance

It’s never too early for high school students to focus on career exploration. From resume to researching dream jobs, use these career life skills for future high school students.

• Write resume and cover letter. Using sample resumes and cover letters is very good and needs improvements to allow students to identify the characteristics required for these applied materials. They can improve lower-quality resumes based on their achievements to date to meet employers’ standards and draft their own resumes.
• Play hard skills and soft skills board competition. Chances are, your high school student already has soft skills that many employers like to see. Play board competitions to see which team can determine the softest versus hard abilities from a list read aloud.
• The host simulates job interview. Give young scholars the opportunity to dress up mock job interviews. Invite community members to interview potential prospective employees, or have students interview and evaluate each other’s performance. Don’t forget the quick lessons of your ideal handshake!
• Create a video job application. Paper resumes are from the 20th century. Demonstrate students’ skills through video work apps, enabling them to incorporate their achievements and inject personality into memorable and eye-catching video presentations.
• Let students study their dream jobs. If your high school student is currently on a career path, help them fill the gap with extended research projects on their dream jobs. Encourage them to discover income ranges, skills and education levels required, and possible opportunities for future promotion and growth.

Why teach life skills to high school students?

While high school students have enough time to learn these skills, there are many benefits to introducing these courses earlier rather than later. Life skills are an important part of 21st century education, providing students with a comprehensive education, preparing for the next generation and preparing for a world that changes every day. They also help students set goals for high school, putting them on the right path to a successful life.

The benefits are more than that! Research shows that learning life skills can help adolescents avoid high-risk behaviors, especially when they come from houses that don’t teach these skills. Life skills activities for high school students may allow students to escape generational cycles and avoid pitfalls in finance, relationships, health and careers.

Prepare for high school students in the next stage of life

High school students look like adults, but they are still somewhat growing. Whether they are attending a four-year college or finding a job from a school, there are more resources for high school life skills to prepare them. There’s a good chance your life skills course is probably the one they remember the most – definitely the one they use every day!