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High schoolers love to ask, “When am I going to use this in my real life?” When you teach life skills like financial literacy, time management, and social-emotional understanding, they won’t need to ask that question anymore!

Use these low-prep life skills activities for high school students who are just a few years (or even months!) from becoming adults. From analyzing friendships to balancing a budget, they’ll certainly find opportunities to use these lessons in their real lives.

Activities for Understanding Friendships and Relationships

Teens spend a lot of time with their friends, but that doesn’t mean they have the social-emotional skills needed to navigate those relationships. Use these activities to foster social skills for high school students that they’ll use long after leaving your classroom. They also make great high school icebreakers for the first week of school!

• Introduce an active listening challenge. Ask two volunteers (students or teachers) to role-play a conversation that includes body language changes and slight conflicts. Have the class analyze what they heard from the conversation, or let them choose one person to replace with themselves to resolve the conflict.
• Practice conflict resolution time travel. Have students write to a high school journal prompt about a conflict they’ve experienced and see if anyone is willing to share their conflict. If not, brainstorm a list of general conflicts, and then discuss how each conflict would be resolved in different time frames.
• Play collaborative games. Rather than making team projects and games competitive, find competitive games for your students to play. A popular choice is the Chain of Communication, in which students stand in order of a theme they’ve agreed upon (such as birth order, name alphabetical order, or height). 
• Hold speed friendship rounds. Break up the old friendship patterns in your class with speed friendship rounds. Have students rotate around the classroom to have quick two-minute conversations with as many peers as possible, asking questions that help them get to know each other better.
• Organize a community service project. Address multiple life skills as you organize a service project for your class to help the community. Popular community service ideas for high school students include neighborhood clean-ups, elementary reading sessions, and community gardens.

Engaging Activities for Managing Time and Study Skills

When it comes to important high school life skills, time management and study skills are at the top of the list. Use these helpful time management activities for high school students to keep learners on track for any upcoming challenges.

• Assess students’ executive functioning challenges. Learn how much students understand about their current skills with a discussion about common study challenges. See how many students struggle with procrastination, distractions, and time management, and brainstorm ways for them to change their current habits.
• Introduce planners and schedules. Planners are an easy and ideal way to address study skills for high school students! Print out schedule templates or use school-issued planners to help students plan both short-term and long-term projects and upcoming assignments.
• Assign timed group projects with priorities. How much of a group project can students complete in one class period? Assign a quick project to teams or pairs, and encourage students to make a list of priorities before finishing the project together.
• Write out a 24-hour schedule. Help high schoolers see how they really spend a full day with a daily schedule. Have them write down how they spend each minute, including the hours they slept, scrolled on social media, chatted with friends, or completed other activities. Then, students can decide how to reorganize the way they spend their time.
• Find out how long a minute feels. Can your high schoolers tell how long a minute really is? Tell them to close their eyes and raise their hand when they think a minute has passed. Note how many students raise their hands too early or too late, and discuss how it can be difficult to track the passing of time without tools like timers or schedules.

Financial Literacy Skills Activities for Teens

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

• Model wants vs. needs. So many financial decisions can be put into these two categories! Have students create two columns that include things they want versus things they need. Then, lead a discussion about how students can ensure they meet their actual needs before addressing the things they want.
• Practice making a budget. Hand out budget templates, a list of budget line items (including rent, utilities, groceries, and other items), and current market rates for each one. As pairs or individuals, students then plan out a budget and determine how much they would need to earn to live independently on their current budget.
• Demonstrate a classroom taxation system. Imagine a generation of students who know how to file taxes before they even have a job! Use a sample federal income tax return and example jobs and incomes for students to experience the task of filing their first taxes.
• Explain credit cards and credit scores. Perfect for a math class, an economics unit, or a lesson on life skills for high school students, a credit card activity teaches students all about how credit cards and credit scores work. Take them through a sample credit card statement and calculate how much interest would accrue based on how quickly (or slowly) they pay off the hypothetical balance.
• Research college tuition and financial aid. Send students off to college with the knowledge they need using an activity on college tuition and financial aid. Have students conduct research on the average cost of attending a range of colleges, including out-of-state universities, state schools, and local community colleges. Then introduce the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and discuss how financial aid and interest rates work.

Helpful Health and Personal Care Activities for High Schoolers

Everything is changing in a typical teen’s life, including their body. Incorporate life skills activities for high school students that discuss their health and personal care needs to help them take care of themselves.

• Set personal care goals. Ask students if there is an aspect of their lives that they’d like to change, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, or any other personal area. Provide measurable ways for them to change those habits, then have them set a goal over a month to see how they succeed.
• Write a script for a doctor’s appointment. If your high school students haven’t been to the doctor without their parents yet, now is a good time to learn. Create a sample script in class for students to take to the doctor, adding questions about reproductive care and hygiene that they may be too embarrassed to ask with their parents around.
• Have teens track their sleep. Most teens don’t get enough sleep, though they’d be reluctant to admit that. Have them use personal devices (such as smart watches or phones) to track their sleep over a week, or hand out paper schedules for them to jot down how many hours of sleep they got each night.
• Play teen care Bingo. With a blank Bingo card, have students label common ways to stay healthy, such as “Eat fruits and vegetables” and “Get regular exercise.” Read off the habits you’ve discussed in class and see who can score five in a row the fastest!
• Change one eating habit. Whether it’s eating a full breakfast or trading out soda for water, the high schoolers in your class may need a boost to change their eating habits. Ask them to make just one consistent change for a week, then monitor how they feel after making that switch.

Plan ahead with activities for career skills

It’s never too soon to focus on career exploration for high school students. From resumes to researching dream jobs, use these career life skills for high school students who have one eye on the future.

• Write a resume and cover letter. Using sample resumes and cover letters that are both very good and need improvement, have students identify the needed characteristics of these application materials. They can improve the lower-quality resumes to meet employers’ standards and draft their own resumes based on their accomplishments so far.
• Play hard skills vs. soft skills board races. Chances are, your high schoolers already have many soft skills that employers like to see. Play a game of board races to see which team can identify the most soft skills versus hard skills from a list you read out loud.
• Host mock job interviews. Give young scholars the chance to dress up with mock job interviews. Invite members of the community to interview their potential future employees, or have students interview and assess each other’s performances. Don’t forget a quick lesson on the ideal handshake!
• Create video job applications. Paper resumes are so 20th century. Showcase students’ skills with video job applications that let them incorporate their accomplishments and infuse their personalities in a memorable, eye-catching video presentation.
• Have students research their dream job. If your high schoolers are currently on a career path, help them fill in the gaps with an extended research project on their dream job. Encourage them to discover income ranges, needed skills and education levels, and possible opportunities for future promotion and growth.

Why Teach Life Skills to High School Students?

While high school students have plenty of time to learn these skills, there are many benefits to introducing these lessons earlier rather than later. Life skills are a vital component of 21st-century education, providing students with a well-rounded education that prepares the next generation for a world that’s changing every day. They also help students set goals for high school that put them on the right path toward a successful life.

And the benefits don’t stop there! Studies show that learning life skills can help teens avoid high-risk behaviors, especially if they come from homes where these skills are not taught. Life skills activities for high school students may allow students to break out of generational cycles and avoid pitfalls in finances, relationships, health, and careers.

Prepare high schoolers for the next phase of life

High schoolers may look like adults, but they’ve still got some growing to do. Use more high school life skills resources to get them ready for those next steps, whether they’re attending a four-year university or getting a job right out of school. Chances are, your life skills lessons may be the ones they remember most — and definitely the ones they’ll use every day!