two fun games to use in classroom guidance lessons or small group counseling to teach and practice self control strategies -Counselor Keri
Ladies and Gentleman... we officially have the first week down in the books!! And what an AMAZING week it was!! #BestFirstWeekEver!! My kiddos are just awesome. We learned a lot and laughed a lot! My own children also had a great week (aside from a quick bout of a stomach bug that kept one home for a day!). My oldest, Drew, started 1st grade. My middle, Quinn, started Kindergarten. And my toddler twins, Addy and Chase, began two-mornings-a-week preschool. Additionally, Mr. Musings from the Middle School (my husband Dennis), started a new school year, too! Phew!! My head is spinning! Anyway, I hope everyone is having a great weekend and recovering from this busy time of year. This post is mainly a pictorial of some of the goings on in my classroom this week. As we settle into our routine, I'll be back with more "meaty" posts (and hopefully some new videos, too!). One of my favorite activities from the week was this Growth Mindset lesson that I adapted from here. Basically, the kids had to create the image on top using just a piece of paper and scissors. It was NOT easy... but that's exactly the point! As the kids worked, I wrote down some of the comments I heard. Things like, "this is impossible," and "I give up!" After I let them struggle for a while, I brought them back together and discussed the activity with them. It was eye-opening to see their words. They all agreed that their attitude was too negative so of course they would never have been successful. Then we read the Growth Mindset posters hanging in our room and discussed what each one meant. I closed with this video from Khan Academy. It was a fun and powerful lesson. One of the BEST purchases I made from TpT for this school year is the Icebreakers that Rock bundle from Cult of Pedagogy. This product contains three PowerPoint activities that allow students to talk to each other in an easy, comfortable way. What is great about these is that you can use them as one, big activity, or you can break them up, showing just a few slides here and there, as "brain breaks" through out the day. That is how I used them. So, on the first day, I did a big "Find Someone Who" activity with them. This allowed all the kids to learn each other's names. Next, I assigned them all their lockers and we practiced opening the combination locks (super-stressful for these first time locker users)! After that, we did a few slides from Icebreakers that Rock. Then, we went over the syllabus. Next, a few more Icebreakers that Rock slides. After that, I handed out and went over all the paperwork that had to go home and be signed (oh, the paperwork!!!). Then, a few more slides right before lunch. And then a few more right after lunch. Next up, a tour of the building. Then a few more slides before trying our lockers again. Finally, another slide right before dismissal. It was the perfect break/filler/attention-getter/distraction to use throughout the day... actually, I used the slides throughout the whole week! Run to TpT and pick this product up today! Totally worth every penny. (Some of the slides can be done silently. I LOVED these slides!!) Of course, we had to number our notebooks to get ready for ELA next week. I always tell kids that this is the easiest, most difficult task that we do all year :) I really the love smell of a Mr. Sketch anchor poster in the morning! This year, I'm starting with Reading Nonfiction: Notice and Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies. My thinking is that it will really help with getting started with Article of the Week. Here is one of several of the posters I'll be using to teach these strategies. I'm jumping on the #ObserveMe bandwagon! Read more about it here. I'll keep you updated on how this goes throughout the year! Okay... that is enough for now! The beach is calling my name... nothing beats September here at the Jersey Shore! Hope the back-to-school season is treating you well! I'd love to hear how your school year is going so far. Happy Teaching!!
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One of my biggest strengths (and weaknesses) is that I’m outspoken. There’s not much in the realm of school counseling that I don’t have a strong opinion about. That means there’s some things that are commonplace among other counselors that I don’t do – because they just aren’t in the best interest of my students. […]
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Through the years I have had a few students with selective mutism. When I met my first student with S.M., I thought she was just very shy. For this post, I will call her Sally but that is not her real name. But, after a couple of weeks of school, it was clear that there was more going on that a case of shyness. That is when I asked for a meeting with Sally's parents to get their insight into what was happening. Her parents told me that she would only talk to the people in her immediate family and one neighbor. She wouldn't even speak to her grandparents or cousins. After observations and meetings with her pediatrician, counselor, speech pathologist, she was officially diagnosed as having selective mutism. Luckily, Sally's parents were very open to ideas and happy to try anything that we suggested. Sally's mom would send me something to school on a weekly basis. Sometimes it was a bag of cookies that Sally and her mom had baked together. Other times Sally's mom let her pick out a packet of stickers to donate to our class. Sally's job was to hand the item(s) to me. We set the following goals: 1st: Hand the item to the teacher without mom standing beside her. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 2nd: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 3rd: Hand the item to the teacher and say you're welcome. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 4th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 5th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. Answer teacher's question with one word. I said thank you and then asked her a question that could be answered with one word - usually a yes/no question. 6th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. Answer teacher's question with 2 or more words. I said thank you and then asked her a question that required a few more details. Once again, Sally's parents provided extra support to help her build relationships with her classmates. Sally and her mom loved to bake. Usually students only brought treats for their birthday. I gave her mom permission to send in treats more frequently. When Sally passed out the treats to her classmates, she was concentrating on the actual process of passing out, and less about her anxiety about communicating with her classmates. We set goals for this too. 1st: Pass out treats without teacher support. 2nd: Pass out treat and make eye contact with classmates. 3rd: Pass out treat, make eye contact with classmates, and smile when student says thank you. 4th: Pass out treat, make eye contact with classmates, and say you're welcome when classmate says thank you. Sally received weekly support from our school counselor. Our counselor let Sally choose a buddy come with her. She and the buddy played games in the counselor's office. In the beginning, Sally would only smile and shake her head for yes or no. But, over time she slowly began to whisper to the counselor and her buddy. I think it helped that there was only one buddy and they were in a quiet office so she felt more comfortable. By the end of the year, she was able to invite 3 buddies to go with her. As you can imagine she became very popular because she got to pick her buddy(ies). Word quickly spread that if Sally chose you, you got to go play games. Students wanted to sit by her at lunch and invited her to play games with them at recess. There are different reasons why a student may have S.M. Sometimes it is an anxiety issue. Click HERE to read more about this topic. Interested in reading more posts? Click on the pictures below.
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One of my favorite activities to do with my students is “The Toothpaste Lesson.” As early as preschool, most students are exposed to the phrase, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” I think it’s great that they learn this, but what is even better is when they […]
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Growth Mindset: The Power of Yet Recently my 1st grade classroom has morphed into a K/1 combination classroom and then resulted in HUGE gaps (academically, socially, & emotionally) between my s…
It's hard to talk to students without making it a lecture. Empower students while you teach them about respect using hands on activities
As more and more research comes out about the power of Growth Mindset and more and more people are leaning towards this line of thinking (heck, even my District is getting on board...they talked about it at a training I went to over the summer!), I figured that this would be as good a time as any to teach my students about their own brains and mindset. So I began my first week of school with a few lessons that really set a great tone for my students. To begin, I wanted something tangible and hands-on for my students to experience. So I searched online and found this lesson here. In a nutshell, I folded some paper in a crazy figure (that didn't actually look all crazy...until I tried to make it...go to the blog for exact instructions) and told the students they needed to recreate it. I had them get into groups of 7-8 students, put the figure in the middle and gave them each the exact same piece of paper I used. There were only two rules: They could not touch the folded paper and they could not have a second piece of paper. Most of the students got right to it. As they were working, I walked around with a clipboard and wrote down everything that I was hearing in the groups. At the beginning, I heard things like: This is easy. Look, we just fold it this way and then that. Let me get my scissors and we can all just cut it. Hmmm....I wonder how she did that. Can you just show me what you are doing? Then, as time went on and recreating the folded paper wasn't as easy as they thought, the narrative started to change. I started to hear: Wait, what? This isn't going to work. I can't get this. What did you do? Seriously, she had to use tape. How did she get that part? Let's only do one paper at a time in case we make a mistake. This was also the time when I started to see some kids just sit back and watch. They stopped trying altogether and just let everyone else experiment. I also noticed some kids taking charge completely and not letting others have opinions. Then, towards the end, I heard: This is impossible. I give up. I just can't do this. What on earth did she do? She used magic. After about 10 minutes of working, I called them all together again (no one was able to fold it correctly), I showed the students what they said. It was a bit eye-opening for them to see that some just quit so early on or that they declared the task impossible. Clearly it wasn't, as I had just folded the paper. They just wanted me to tell them the answer. This then lead into a nice discussion about the basic principles of growth mindset. That you have to keep going and trying. That your brain was meant to learn. So I passed out a quiz that I got from Angela Watson of the Cornerstone for Teachers. (she has a whole Growth Mindset pack that is really useful) They took the quiz, which asks questions about whether students think they can learn and grow or if they were just born that way. Then, we watched a video that Angela links from the Khan Academy about the fact that our brains were born to learn. We wrote down many ideas from the video, the biggest being that failure = growing. That REALLY stuck with them. I then asked the students to write down all of the words they could think of that pertained to their idea of what it means that "you were born to learn." The more important words, in their opinion, were to be larger than the less important words. Effectively, they were making a free form word cloud. I then took their picture as if they were screwing in a lightbulb, glued it onto the word cloud they created, and using tissue paper, they formed a "lightbulb" above their hand. All in all, this was a fabulous way to introduce the idea of growth mindset to my students. This entire process took two days to complete, but it was well worth it. The students continue to make connections to that first video from Khan Academy and refer to the idea of "failure = growing" still. I am also finding that there is just a much more positive tone in class because of it. I can't wait to continue on with future lessons. Have you delved into growth mindset? What are your experiences?
Money is a fun topic for our little learners! They see adults use it all the time, and they want to be a part of it. A newer standard, financial literacy, is a fun unit that many kids love. Let's Use this at Home This binder is perfect for any type of learning. I created
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This character building object lesson about forgiveness takes a fun science experience and relates it to the risks of choosing not to forgive. This is one more activity in my character building series. Object lessons helps connect a hands-on and visual experience with the heart. A picture like the one presented today is more likely...Read More
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Too many classroom icebreakers require students to take big social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy.
