September is Attendance Awareness Month 

Annual Hot Chocolate Treat!

It's National School Counselor Appreciation Week!

Each year, I like to provide a hot chocolate bar for teachers, support staff, administration, front office staff, and custodians.

Usually, I set this up in the workroom for ease of access since most visit that room at some point during the day and it's centrally located. However, this year, I decided to move it to my office so I could keep it fresh and full throughout the day. This gave others a reason to visit my office and provided a clear pathway to make connections and 

chit-chat a little. 

Self-Regulation Skills

2nd Grade students spend the year learning about 

self-regulation. This lesson gives them the opportunity to explore Expected and Unexpected Behaviors in various situations. It also fosters self-awareness as they complete a short survey that helps them identify their triggers.

2019 RAVE and 2019 Alabama School Counseling Program of Distinction Awards

Woo! Hoo!

Hard work and dedication really do pay off!

The FES Counseling Program received the 

2019 RAVE Award

and the

2019 Alabama School Counseling Program of Distinction Award!

Leadership Day

Our FES Student Lighthouse Team led educators visiting our school on Leadership Day around the campus, showing them how we incorporate Leader in Me into our daily life at school. Here, they are showing them the front atrium where the 7 Habits are hanging on all sides.

Types of Communication

3rd Grade students spend the year focusing on Conflict Resolution. Often, conflicts arise without us intending for them to happen and without us understanding why.

We spend time learning about different types of communication - passive, aggressive, and assertive. These students are thinking through different ways to respond to a situation.

I Love These People!

FES has the #1 Custodial Staff!

Pictured with our principal and one of our assistant principals, the custodial staff shines their light!

Every Christmas, this group of fabulous ladies and gentlemen select a few students to adopt for Christmas. They make me smile every time I talk to them!

Good School Habits

Attendance Small Group

At the elementary level, it might be thought that students have no control over whether or not they get to school on time or even come to school at all. While that may be true sometimes, it is not true all the time.

Students in our attendance small group took time to learn what they can do to help get to school on time each day possible. 

Play-Doh?

Who would have ever thought Play-Doh could be such a powerful motivator?

When we read A Walk in the Rain with a Brain, we learned that our brains learn best when we play. So, I decided to leave a few minutes at the end of each lesson for play. The class earns that play time by listening carefully and helping us get through our lesson with enough time left to play. 

They love it!

My Brain is Unique!

This is one of my favorite books to read with students at the beginning of the school year!

After we spend some time learning about the brain and how each person's brain is made just for them, students imagine what their brain looks like and draw a picture.

Then, students identify three things their brain is already pretty good at doing. 

After a discussion about how what we say to ourselves really does matter, students write down three things they can say to themselves during a test to help them feel more confident. 

Meet the Counselor Lesson

Welcome Back!

Over the past two weeks, 2nd Grade and new students to Fairhope Elementary met their school counselor, while 3rd Grade and returning students refreshed what they already knew about their school counselor.

Meet the Counselor Lesson Plan

(Click to view)

Meet the Counselor Presentation

(Click to view)

Off to Kindergarten!

Feel like you have prepared your sweet baby for Kindergarten by working on these skills:

Coming from a counselor, I recommend a lot of attention be given to #6. 

Good Hygiene

I made this folder for a student who needed a little reminder about how to take care of herself. This is often an awkward conversation to have with students and parents. The list on the left is laminated and stuck to the folder with Fun-Tak so that she can take it off when she gets home and stick it to her bathroom mirror. The calendar on the right is for her to check off each day as she completes tasks from the list. She'll bring the folder to school every day and show how well she is taking care of herself. Of course, incentives are involved when she shows improvement! 

Great Article!

Great article on today's kids!

I found this article to be very true. 

It's definitely worth reading if you work with children! Just click on the link above to view. 

Friendship Lesson

Making friends is so important in the elementary years! Even more important is learning how to keep the friends we make. During this lesson, we talked about reflecting on ourselves to determine if we are being the friend we are looking for in others.

Click here (2nd grade) and here (3rd grade) for links to my Friendship Prezi's. 

Both started with the cutest song ever by Jack Johnson.

For 2nd grade, We read How to Lose All Your Friends by: Nancy Carlson. It helped introduce some behaviors that make others not want to be around us. 

Then, we did an experiment called Pepper Chase.

 

3rd grade went right into making a list of things that make us want/not want to be friends with someone. 

 

 Then we used Cotton vs. Sandpaper

 to help us understand that we want our words/actions to come across to others like cotton instead of sandpaper. We talk about why our clothes are made mostly out of cotton. We try to imagine if our clothes were made out of sandpaper. All of the students gasp when I say that, which opens the opportunity to say that other people react the same way when our words/actions are like sandpaper. Each student keeps their cotton ball as a reminder to treat others in a way that makes them want to be friends with them.

Both grades loved the book Friends to the End for Kids! Who doesn't love a good book filled with funny pictures of animals?

2nd grade's lesson ended with each class making a Friendship Survival Kit to hang in their classroom as a reference for the rest of the year. 

 

Bully B.E.A.N.S.

I love to use Julia Cook's books in counseling!

3rd grade students learned about bullying using Julia Cook's Bully B.E.A.N.S.

  

Of course, I always bring my bag of Bully B.E.A.N.S. with me! After we read the story, we looked at the following poster to see if we could identify all of these things happening in the book. 

Sure enough, it was all in there!

Once we had a good idea of what bullying is, we took a little time to talk about what is not bullying. I have found with students in K-3rd grade, often situations are categorized as bullying when they really are not. We used the following chart to help us understand better (taken from Pinterest):

This chart is left in each classroom as a reference throughout the year. 
For a link to my Anti-Bullying Prezi, click here.

Conflict Resolution

After teaching about bullying, and helping students understand that sometimes we have disagreements with others that are not considered bullying, I figured the next best topic to discuss would be Conflict Resolution. Click on the link to access my  Conflict Resolution Prezi . 

I had this lesson planned long before teaching it. Little did I know, it would fall during the week we celebrated Dr. Seuss! It must have been meant to be!

 

Students loved watching The Zax and seeing how refusing to budge from the way we think can cause problems. 

We talked about different ways to handle conflicts - Soft, Loud, and Think and Share. (This idea came from Pinterest.) Together we decided that the Zax used a Loud way to respond to their conflict.

We watched another quick video from Youtube, studying which way the characters handled their conflict.

Our lesson ended with a chart of different options for responding to conflict, which I left in each classroom as a reference.

2nd Grade Kindness Lesson

2nd Grade students learned about Kindness this week. 

We started with a very short Kindness Video.

This video leads into a great discussion of how Kindness is a choice and when you choose to be kind to someone, you choose to plant a seed that grows and is spread to others.

Then we read the book  Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.

Following the book, we do a Bucket Fillers, Bucket Dippers activity where students are given actions printed on paper and they must decided if it is an example of a Bucket Filler or Bucket Dipper. Sitting next to each bucket is an apple. I use these apples to do an activity I found on Pinterest. 

At the end of our lesson, we complete Bucket Filler, Bucket Dipper anchor charts for them to hang in their classrooms.

 

 

Counselor's Office 2016-17

 Big move this year into the main office!

I actually have an office instead of a classroom. 

(More on how I feel about this at the end of this post.)

The first thing I had to do was make it look a little more kid friendly.

 These colorful "BE" words and tree with lights were just what this wall needed!

This area has all of my calm-down tools, games, Play-doh, balls...

The blue treasure chest has treasures for our PBIS program.

 

 This area houses my books, separated by topics. The clear plastic trays on the shelf have kinetic sand in them. I recommend this for every counseling office! It's fun to play with, but also very relaxing. 

The basket has several Emoji pillows I bought from Wal-Mart for less than $5 each. 

Inside the drawer on this table are drawing paper, crayons, and markers. Under the table are puzzles. A new addition to my office this year is the Lite-Brite! I'm always looking for different things for the kids to do while we talk.

So, my feelings on moving into the main office...

I've discovered that I love it! Now that I don't have my own classroom, I travel from room to room for whole group lessons. I love that, too!

I still have a large closet down by my old classroom that I was able to turn into a small group room.

The best part is when the principal or front office ladies need me, I don't have to walk all the way across the school to get to them. Life is Good, for sure!

2016-17 FES Peer Helpers

These students were nominated by their 2nd or 3rd Grade teachers to be a part of our Peer Helper Program. This means that they possess stand-out leadership qualities, are respectful, friendly, helpful, and choose to be kind! They will spend this year learning The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Steven Covey. They will also lead our school in Red Ribbon activities, a canned food drive benefiting Ecumenical Ministries, and a special project with our Red Ribbon Leader.