The obvious thing is to talk about what you all did over Xmas and/or resolutions/plans for the New Year, depending on whether you want to focus on past forms, future forms etc. To jazz it up a bit, you could :
- ask them to write it down, without including identifying details like their name etc. Monitor and correct as they work, then read out the paragraphs. The class vote on who was the writer.
- you (or a student) write on the board various ambiguous keywords describing your holidays. One of yours Clive could be Mario (based on your other post this week). the group then has to ask questions until they've found out why that word was relevant to your holiday.
- each student writes three (or five sentences abut their holiday/new year's resolutions of which one is untrue. the rest of the group decide which.
For more advanced classes, ask them to predict what will happen in 2007. Again you could write keywords on the board - America, Iraq, the environment, technology, sport, TV etc. Get them to write down at least three predictions and to read them out to the group. Note them on the board, then give out an article making predictions for 2007 and get them to read it to check : are any of the predictions the same? Opposite? Completely different?
For an article you could use, try :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6175079.stm
Or in classes of only one or two students, get them to do the BBC end of year quiz :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6199909.stm