Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Friendship Group: The Struggle of a New Counselor

I started running a friendship group at my elementary school to build social skills and to help some of the students meet others in their grade level experiencing the same things they are. For some insane reason, I thought it would be an excellent idea to run the same group topic (friendship group) for grades 1-5. I meet with my first grade group on Mondays, second grade on Tuesdays (I think you get the gist...) all the way up to fifth grade on Fridays. Meaning I am running five groups per week. For many seasoned counseling vets, as well as well-organized newcomers, this may seem like nothing. However, I am definitely willing to admit that this has not been the case for myself. Needless to say, this scheduling bind that I have found myself in has kept me busy. I started with a simple outline of the session group topics: 

•Session 1: Introduction/Group Rules/ “Getting to Know You”
•Session 2:  Qualities of a Friend/ “What is a friend?” 
•Session 3: Different kinds of friends/ Making Connections 
•Session 4:  Talking and Listening Rules of Friendship/ Communication Building 
•Session 5:  Friendly behaviors/ Leading and Following 
•Session 6:  Friendly Skills/ Sharing (1-2)                Friendship Blockers/Reputations (3-5) 
•Session 7:  Friendly Skills/Games and Taking turns (1-2)   Saying No/ Handling Rejection (3-5)
•Session 8: Friendship STARS/ Closure 

I found these session topics with a little help from 1. Google and 2. The Awesome PDF Resources Below: 
Questions for my School Counselors out there: 
  • What groups are you running? 
  • How did you decide your topics for each session? 
  • Have you ever implemented a free form small group at your school? How was it? 
  • What are some excellent FREE resources you recommend? 
  • What is a scheduling challenge that you have made before and how did you handle it? 

2 comments:

  1. I was wondering how the groups were going for you! You are definitely busy... As a high school counselor, I am lucky to run one small group this semester and I am planning on having at least 1 per academic year ( hopefully 1 per semester once I get a handle of things) I did a new student group, and it is very unstructured. We sort of follow the outline of each session, but we usually end up talking about whatever is on our minds. I definitely rely on the group process rather than the content. My next group I am hoping to implement is a grief group- and I was actually wondering if you had any suggestions on how to advertise such group to students? xoxo

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  2. The groups are going well so far! I feel like I am getting to know my kids on a much deeper level. Today, we did an activity with clay. I took pictures of there work and will post them later. I am so impressed with my 3rd grade.

    As far as a grief group...that's a tough one....let me think on it.

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