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.

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.

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)

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.

 

 

Meet the Counselor 2016

2nd Grade:

After sharing a slideshow with students that included who I am, 

a picture of my family and our favorite place - THE BEACH!, 

a picture of my office, 

and our Give Me 5 poster, 

I was ready to read Mrs. Joyce Gives the Best High-Fives. 

This book is a great resource to help explain what a school counselor does. Students learned that their school counselor is like their adult friend. They also learned the counselor's office is a safe place and what they say in my office, stays in my office. We ended our lesson with students creating their best high-fives on construction paper. I took those high-fives and created a display with them. (Picture of that display later in this post.)

3rd Grade:
 I shared the same personal information with 3rd grade students, but instead of reading the book, we had a presentation that highlighted all the things mentioned in the book. We took time to do some thinking about ourselves during the lesson. Students answered the following three questions on sticky notes. I will use them when I do my mini meetings. 

 

One of the things the counselor can help with is figuring out how to manage all of those unique feelings everyone has. We ended with students tracing their hands and choosing a "feelings" word to write inside the palm. I then combined their handprints with 2nd grade's handprints to create a display in our hallway.

Kindness

 

What a great book!

Students listened to and watched this book being read on YouTube. 

Click here for the video.

After the book, we talked about bucket fillers and bucket dippers. I used this chart that I found and saved on my Pinterest page.

We ended our lesson with an activity where two students held little tin buckets. One represented Bucket Fillers and the other represented Bucket Dippers. I printed examples of both types of behaviors that I found on Pinterest and students sorted each into the correct bucket.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

We had so much fun introducing ourselves to new students and reminding everyone else who we are and what we do! 

We started the lesson with a cute video showing babies eating lemons for the first time.  

Click here to see the video.

Then, we talked about how the babies probably thought the lemons tasted sour. We could tell by the faces they were making!

This lead into a discussion about how sometimes in life we experience things that seem "sour," some more so than others. Students gave examples of "lemons" in life (both at home and at school) and helped us determine if the lemon was a one lemon or two lemon kind of problem.  Each time an example was given, a student had to hold those lemons. Eventually, the lemons began to fall to the floor which sparked a discussion about how we are not meant to hold onto the lemons. As students gave suggestions for who we can talk to about life's lemons, classmates began to take lemons from the student. Of course, their school counselors were listed as someone to talk to!

We ended our lesson with a funny video of all their teachers eating lemons. (I would have posted the video, but I didn't want to create any lemons for myself!) Ha! Ha!

Bullying Prevention Lessons

2nd Graders visited wedolisten.org to watch and listen to Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Bullies by Howard Binkow.

This site is wonderful! It has animated books, songs, games, lessons, and more to go with all the Howard B. Wigglebottom books! We used the story to discuss the terms: bully, target, and bystander.

3rd Graders listened as I read Bully B.E.A.N.S. by Julia Cook.

I LOVE Julia Cook books!

We used the story to discuss the terms: bully, target, and bystander. We discussed the strategies used in the story for dealing with bullies. We saw how much power bystanders have by participating in one of the activities from the book that accompanies Bully B.E.A.N.S. 

We ended our lesson with a School Tube video to help them understand what it takes to be an Upstander! Of course, we couldn't forget to eat our Bully Beans before going back to the classroom!

Get ready for state testing!

This was a big hit with our 3rd grade students experiencing state testing for the first time! 

IKNOW Test Taking Strategies!

After testing each day, our Peer Helpers took posters and the corresponding treats to 3rd grade classes. The daily treat themes were:

You're on a Roll! - Tootsie Rolls

No Dum-Dums at FES! Our scores will rock! - Dum Dums (suckers)

Blow that test out of the water! - Blow Pops

Punch that test! - Sour Punch Straws 

Oh the Places You'll Go!

We are all familiar with the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss. I decided to use this book in January to talk about goal setting for 2nd and 3rd Grade. We read the book and created hot air balloons with pictures of things the students would like to do, be, or achieve.

When we were finished, we had a colorful wall display of FES students' goals for life.

"Too Loved to Do Drugs"

2nd and 3rd Grade students are learning about healthy habits and unhealthy habits. I first explain what a habit is. Then we brainstorm a list of healthy habits and unhealthy habits. We talk about how some habits are ok in moderation, but if they are done too much then they become unhealthy (eating chocolate, playing video games...). We move right into reminding ourselves that we have Friends, Family, and people in our Community who love us way too much to ever let us choose to do drugs.

I then give each student a red, yellow, and white piece of paper. They are instructed to write the name of a friend on the red paper, a family member on the yellow paper, and a person from the community on the white paper.

We glue each student's papers to our chart in order to help us remember that we are surrounded by friends, family, and people in our community who love us. Each class takes the chart back to their room to hang on the wall for the rest of October.

The idea for the chart came from a post on Pinterest showing a worksheet for students to complete. I just decided to create one chart for each class instead of copying papers for everyone.

Meet the Counselors!

To go along with our school's "Bugs" theme, we decided to dress as Ladybugs to remind students that we are the "Ladies" they can come to when something "Bugs" them.

K-1 students went on a scavenger hunt around the school with the ladybugs to find the counselor's offices and to discover what the school counselor does.

2nd and 3rd grade students took a test on their first visit with the counselors! YUCK! Well, they soon discovered that this wasn't an ordinary test. This was a CPS test all about their school counselors AND they didn't need a pencil! They could answer with a remote control!

We ended our lesson with a little clip from Kid President talking all about taking the path that leads to AWESOME!

 



Test Taking

I start my lesson with an introduction to a few characters...Worrying Willy, Don't Care Dora, Unprepared Peter, Messy Molly, Don't Listen Larry, and Tom and Tillie Try It. These characters are part of a story that I read to students describing different traits some of us possess when testing.

After the story, we brainstorm Test Taking Strategies on the board. 

Then I show the students the following video:

We end the lesson with students choosing a strategy and making a poster to hang in the halls until testing is over.





Recipe for a School Counselor

 

The absolute best way to start the year introducing ourselves to students! It's tough for little ones to really understand what the counselor is here for...so why not have some fun?

 

This is the lesson used for K-1 students. I found the bulk of this lesson either on Pinterest or on another counselor's blog ( I can't remember which one! I will search and find it so I can give credit where credit is due.) Then I tweaked it to fit our school.

 

Lesson

Materials:

Apron

Typed recipe to pin to apron

Big cooking pot

Heart stickers (for each student)

White paper chef’s hat

Big wooden spoon

Small heart pillow

Two long rubber gloves (the fancier the better)

Heart cut out of cardstock (Pin to apron)

Rice (kindness)

Measuring cup

Dried Beans (compassion)

2 large fake ears

1 empty Pringles can (to make into seasoning shaker)

Large plastic glasses

 

RECIPE FOR A SCHOOL COUNSELOR

(I made note cards with the ingredient on one side and notes to remember to say on the other side)

1 Large heart- very tender

2 willing hands

1 soft shoulder

2 listening ears

A dash of sound advice

2 cups of kindness

3 compassion beans

Mix all above ingredients. Stir until all judgmental lumps have disappeared. Bake in the

oven of life experience until well done.

Season generously with love.

Serves a multitude of hurting children.

 

Directions: Welcome students into the classroom wearing the safety glasses, chef’s hat, and apron. Begin the lesson by saying your name and explaining that you are the school counselor. Ask if everyone knows why we use a recipe. Get some feedback to make sure everyone knows that a recipe is a guide for cooking something or making something. Talk about how a recipe will have precise measurements (like ½ cup, ¼ teaspoon, etc.) and will list ingredients (like sugar and flour) and will give directions (let students generate words like “mix” and “stir”). Show the front of your apron. Explain that this recipe will help students know who the counselor is and what he/she does at your school. Read the ingredients.

Point to the large heart on your apron first. Read the first ingredient. Say: A counselor has a BIG heart with plenty of love for all ________ students at ________________ School!

Put on the gloves. Read the second ingredient. Say: The counselor is always willing to pitch in and help with projects or events around school…or if a student needs help.

Place the heart pillow on your shoulder and lay your head on it. Read the third ingredient. Say: A counselor is someone with whom you can feel safe and with whom you can share your feelings. They are like a “soft shoulder to cry on.” It’s okay to laugh or cry with a counselor.

 Put on the two fake ears. Read the fourth ingredient. A counselor is a very good listener. Sometimes just talking with the counselor about a problem can help you feel better. Talking to a counselor can also help you think up a solution to your problem.

Pick up the seasoning container and shake over pot. Read the fifth ingredient. Say: A

counselor sometimes just gives “a dash” of advice to get you started thinking of ways to solve your problems. Although a counselor will not be able to tell you all the answers to your problems, or what you should do to solve your problems, she can sometimes generate some ideas of sound advice to consider.

Scoop two cups of rice into the pot. Read the next ingredient. Say: A counselor is always kind and gives examples of kindness….kind words, kind notes, kind acts…

 Drop 3 beans into the pot. Read the sixth ingredient. Say: A counselor shows compassion to others. Compassion means caring about how others feel and showing concern for others. A counselor is very compassionate…understanding how others feel, always eager to show their concern for others.

Then use the big wooden spoon to “pretend” to stir the ingredients.

Read the directions. Talk about what it means to get rid of all judgmental
lumps…to be tolerant and accepting of others who are different in some way…
who look differently or who believe or act differently.

Read the rest of the directions. Talk about how the counselor has “life experiences” that help her know how to help students…that sometimes students think they are the only

ones to ever have a particular problem, but almost always, the counselor has helped others with the same or similar problem.

Place the lid on the pot. Put the pot under a table or something that will serve as an oven. Talk about your counseling program (whole group, small group, individual). Tell the students that it smells like the recipe is just about done cooking. Bring the pot back to the table. Open the lid…pull out heart stickers and give each student a sticker as they leave the room.

OPTIONAL: As you explain each ingredient, you can choose a student to wear the item and sit in the front of the room. At the end of the lesson, use the students to review.