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.

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.