Friday 5: FIVE AMAZING CHILDREN'S BOOKS I use in my Counseling program!

Hello Again and Happy FRIDAY!
Today's FRIDAY 5 is Five Children's Books that I use in my Counseling Program and how I use them! Check em' out and share your favorites below!

**These are in NO particular order**

I LOVE COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK!


#5: It's Okay To Be Different, Written and Illustrated by: Todd Parr
To be honest, I love ALL of Todd Parr's books. They are all wonderful, colorful, and are great for kids. I use his books a lot and read this book with a Kindergarten class during their story time and as well used it for my "Redesign A Favorite Book Cover" Door Contest as my school during our 2014 Book Week in March. The book has fun pictures and pages about how we are all unique and that it is great to be different. This Teach Idea Factory Blog has other FUN ideas to use with the book including making a class book.


#4: Miss Rumphius, Written and Illustrated By: Barbara Cooney
I love this book and used it with my 4th grade students during a Classroom lesson during Random Acts of Kindness Week. The book is about a woman who follows her dreams and also makes the world a more beautiful place. When I first read the book, it tugged at my heart strings quite a bit. After we read the story, we discussed the plot and tied the conversation into how Random Acts of Kindness can make the world more beautiful. We also watched this video tied into RAK. Then, I had each student write their own list of ways they can make the world a more beautiful place.

#3: The Hundred Dresses, By Eleanor Estes
This is one of my most favorite children's books. I remember my fifth grade teacher reading this book to me when I was in elementary school and it truly stuck with me. I typically read this book with grades 4-5 during my Bullying Awareness Unit for Classroom Guidance. The message of the story is still very applicable to students, even though it was published in 1944. I find the students get "sucked in" to the story and many of them have checked out the book independently after hearing in guidance.

#2. The Sneetches and Other Stories, By: Dr. Seuss 
As a huge fan of Dr. Seuss (who isn't?!?) I have to add The Sneetches in here. I have used this with grade 2-5 and they seem to love it. I have used this to teach about Diversity, Exclusion, Discrimination, Cliques, etc. This is a classic that I find I use again and again! Definitely worth a purchase!

















#1: The Monster Who Lost His Mean, By: Tiffany Strelitz Haber and Illustrated By: Kirstie Edmunds
I used this awesome book with my first grade students and I loved it. The book is about a Monster who loses his mean and then more or less realizes he is happier being a nice "Onster" instead of a "Monster". I tied this into a 3-lesson unit I found from The School Counselor's Chronicle Blog. The unit was focused on being assertive and not acting like a "Monster" or a "Mouse". I read the book to the students and then we did a role-play activity and the students pretended to first be "Monsters" and then to "Lose their Mean" and handle it like the "Best Me, I can be!" Needless to say, it was entertaining and a LOT of fun.


For more information about Books for School Counselors check out this link for the Books That Heal Blog!

So, now I want to know... WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 5?!

Friday 5: Five USEFUL and VALUABLE TPT purchases for School Counselors! (IMO)

I had a lot of positive feedback from my last "Friday 5" post  so I thought I would post another. This week's focus is my current TOP 5 TPT School Counseling purchases that I have made so far. I have a few favorite sellers from TPT so it was difficult to choose my top 5 purchases. 

The following purchases are ones that I use frequently and have been well-worth the money. If you are like me, you pay for most (if not all) of your counseling resources out of pocket; it is very important to make sure they are worth every penny! In my opinion, the following ARE! 

1. Emotions Posters and Writing Worksheets from Artrageous Fun

• Cost: $3.00 
• Reasons Why I love it: As a new counselor, I found that I needed some low cost items to "jazz up" my room. I found the posters to be fun AND functional. They are colorful and can be used to show examples of facial expressions and body language. One set includes descriptions of the feeling and the other set just has only the name of the feeling listed. I have both sets up in my room and refer to them often. I keep the "worksheet" that was included on my wall and use it as a "talking tool" to help students verbalize their feelings.

2. Social Skills Program from Crazy Days Counseling

• Cost: $2.00 
• Reasons Why I love it: I have referenced "Crazy Days Counseling" before as one of my favorite sellers in my last "Friday 5 post" AND in my Social Skills Group post. I LOVE this packet. I found it very useful for my students and really enjoyed the "Super Skills Challenge" page. The graphics are nice as well and it is an easy format to use for small groups. 

3. Positive Affirmations for Children from The Helpful Counselor 

• Cost: $3.50 
• Reasons Why I love it: I have also referenced this seller before in my last "Friday 5 post". I really do love these positive affirmations cards and find them useful not only in individual sessions but also small groups. The cards are also well designed and colorful. I find myself going to them quite often!

4. Social Skills Conversation Game from The Helpful Counselor 

• Cost: $5.00
• Reasons Why I love it: I know, I know, another product from The Helpful Counselor. I just love the products they make and this one is no exception. $5.00 is a lot to spend on something for me but I found that the design of the cards and the questions have been really helpful. I use them individually, within small groups, and also use them in my classroom guidance lessons in opening and closing activities. Another plus is that the kids like the cards because they are colorful and cute. They always ask to use them when they come to my room.

5. I Can Be a Pal from Kristen Smith

• Cost: $4.50
• Reasons Why I love it: I find the activities in this packet to be very useful. I typically use them with my lower elementary kiddos and have enjoyed using them in classroom guidance and small groups when focusing on friendship. The games listed are fun, interactive, and easy to implement. An added bonus of this packet is that it is tied into two different children's books as well which make it a quick an easy guidance lesson option.

Are you a TPT user? What are your favorite purchases for counseling? 

R.A.K Week- Spreading the Kindness at AIS!

This week is Random Acts of Kindness Week (February 9-13th). Last year, I had a lot of fun planning R.A.K week and spreading the kindness all over my school. This year, I decided to take it a step further and try to make R.A.K week bigger and BETTER!

**DISCLAIMER** I will admit, I am a thief when it comes to good ideas. I took some ideas from School Counseling blogs and Pinterest mainly.. I will do my best to give credit where credit is due! 

Here are some of the things I did to help celebrate R.A.K week at my school! 

• Morning Announcements: Each day of R.A.K week, I tried to have a little blurb about Random Acts of Kindness. I kept it short, sweet, and direct. Here is an example of one of the morning announcements: 
• Today is DAY 1 of Random Acts of Kindness Week! This week, try to go ABOVE and BEYOND to spread kindness. A simple way to spread kindness is to say something nice. Who can you say something nice to? A teacher, a security guard, a canteen worker, a cleaner, another student, ANYONE!
• Staff Lounge display: It can be difficult to get staff buy-in sometimes, so this year I tried to do something to reach out and appeal to them. In our staff lounge, I posted up some R.A.K week ideas they could use in their classroom. I also added a gum ball machine where staff could write RAKs they received from other teachers. I found this awesome idea from Elementary School Counseling Website, 
• Student Display: Since R.A.K week is so close to Valentines day, I also created a display for our students that said "What will your next R.A.K be?" and posted different ideas on heart cut outs. I also included some pictures as well. The display didn't turn out that great, but it definitely got the idea across.
• Classroom Guidance Lessons: I see every class in grades 1-5 once within a six day cycle. I used the designated "guidance time" (40 minutes) to introduce R.A.K week and give each student a R.A.K challenge to complete!

             
1. With grade one, we made a craft to say thank you to our teachers. After school was out, I snuck into their rooms and taped the cards on their computers. They were quite surprised to see them the next morning and the students were excited to be a part of the surprise! Students also watched the video Color the World with Kindness. 
2. With grade two, we made origami paper hearts and wrote letters or nice encouraging words on the hearts to deliver to teachers. We also watched this video and discussed how kind acts can cause a "ripple effect". The students loved the video and even asked to watch it twice. The origami hearts will be delivered to teachers at the end of the week. 
3. Unfortunately, grade three missed their guidance lessons due to a school-wide event, however their classroom teachers still reinforced kindness in the classroom and did some seperate activities to celebrate R.A.K week. After getting back from our break, the grade three students will receive a lesson on "Keeping the Kindness going!" though. 
4. Grade four viewed a power point of kindness quotes and ideas that I purchased for Teachers Pay Teachers. They also helped create large-scale cards for some of our specialist teachers and departments. Some of the cards we made were for PE, Music, Library, and Art. The students were also able to help deliver their work to the teachers.
5. Grade five was focusing on their Middle School Survival Unit during this time and didn't receive the same focus lesson on kindness as the other students. However, to still encourage Random Acts of Kindness, I had students take a R.A.K from the "Kindness Bucket" and challenged them to complete the act before the end of the week. Next year, I will try to plan better so that they can focus on R.A.K week as well. 

• Small R.A.Ks: Separate from the student led R.A.Ks, I also wanted to spread some kindness around to people within the school. I left pieces of candy and "You have been R.A.Ked" notes on the desks of teachers, assistants, our principal, some of our other various staff members just to help spread some of the love. 

Overall, I think that this R.A.K week has been a successful one thus far! I can't wait to find more activities to celebrate R.A.K week and make it better each and every year! What did you do to R.A.K week? 

Where is the MOTIVATION!?!

• "I can't seem to get them to do anything." 
• "I just wish they were excited about learning." 
• "They seem so lifeless..." 
• "It feels like they don't care anymore!" 
• "My students just aren't motivated!" 

As we enter into our final quarter for the year, I have been hearing more and more of the statements above. I had one fourth grade teacher in particular ask me if I would lead a lesson in his class on motivation. I (over-confidently) said, "Yes! Of course!" However, when I began looking for ideas...I couldn't seem to find anything that hooked me. I always strive to have creative, inspiring and worthwhile lessons and so I was beginning to feel discouraged when I wasn't finding much when it came to motivation. 

I took some time to reflect on my OWN motivation and how it impacts my work. I will admit, the start of the fourth quarter has been a little more difficult for me and I even find myself dragging my feet in the mornings. So I found myself wondering, "How am I going to inspire motivation in students if I struggle with inspiring it within myself?" I was even beginning to think that I may need this lesson just as much as the students! 

I looked around my room for inspiration...art supplies, clay, puppets, toys, balloons...BALLOONS! I remembered a lesson I did with my first graders in which we used balloons to talk about emotions and they absolutely loved it! I thought about how I use balloons to teach about Anger and how if we don't release our anger it can make us POP! I decided I was going to use my trusty balloons again to help me teach about MOTIVATION!

HERE IS HOW THE LESSON WENT: 

• I started off by writing the word "Motivation" on the board. I then had students brainstorm about the meaning of motivation and we had a small discussion. 
• Then, I presented two deflated balloons. I said to the class, "I brought some balloons for us to play with today." I then blew up one balloon and tied it. The other balloon, I left deflated and tied it. I then let the kids play with the two balloons for a minute. It was obvious that the inflated balloon was the most popular choice and the students became bored with the deflated balloon within a matter of seconds. 
• I then shared that the inflated balloon was like someone FULL of MOTIVATION (fun, eye-catching, inspiring) and the deflated balloon was like someone who had NO MOTIVATION (lifeless, no energy, a bit boring) . I attached them to the board and had students create a list of what motivates (fills) them around the balloon and what does not motivate (deflates) them around the other.
• Afterwards, I had them fill out their own sheet about what fills-them-up and what brings them down. We discussed how the key to motivation is remembering to fill yourself up and avoid the things that bring you down. 
• We concluded by showing a video by Kid President. 

After the lesson, I found that I felt more motivated as well! Since I work with a 99% ELL population, I found that the concept was a bit abstract for them but I think it was a good way to get them to begin thinking about motivation.

What tips do YOU have to encourage motivation with your students? 

Random Acts of Kindness Week! Monday!

Assembly Introduction to Random Acts of Kindness Week!

Some mornings we have "Spirit Assemblies". These are used as a way to energize teachers and students and help strengthen our school's community. During these assemblies, we sing our school song and have some announcements. During this week's assembly, I had some of the AIS Secret Service Agents come up in their sunglasses and badges and stand up while we showed a video we created to introduce Random Acts of Kindness. We created this video during our group time and edited it with iMovie (from the App store! AWESOME tool!) 

AIS Random Acts of Kindness Video Link

Check it out! 

The kids seemed to respond well and were excited about the "Secret Agents". 

Morning Announcements for Monday!  

Good morning! This is Agent Dragonfly and Agent Grasshopper from the AIS Secret Service. This week is Random Acts of Kindness week! We perform Random Acts of Kindness when we go beyond what is expected of us and reach out to help another person. There are three simple steps to performing a Random Act of Kindness.

• The first step is to find out what another person needs. For example, Sally has her hands full and she needs to open the door to get to her class.

• The second step is to think about how you would feel if you had that need. You might feel frustrated if your hands were full and you could not easily open the door by yourself. 

• The final step to performing a Random Act of Kindness is to offer your help. Hold the door open and let Sally enter.

There are hundreds of ways to show someone that you care. This week, look for opportunities to show that you care by performing Random Acts of Kindness.

Random Act of Kindness for Teachers!

In order to jump start the week, the students helped post two GIANT paper teacups they created in group. On the teacups they had filled in kind words and compliments for our awesome staff. I donated some tea bags to the Staff lounge and wrote on the board, "Welcome back! AIS is so lucky to have such awesome TEA-chers! Help yourself to some TEA as a thank you for all you do! Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week! -AIS Secret Service"

Classroom Extensions!

I really wanted RAK week to be saturated with information on Kindness and the benefits it has! Up until this point, I have been working with teachers to create lessons for their class that are focused on kindness. Here are some of the resources I shared with them to help spark some ideas! 

"Random Acts of Kindness Week will be here soon! Here are some resources to help your planning and RAK week discussions with your students." 

·         Educator Resources:  http://www.randomactsofkindness.org/kindness-resources

·         Character Ed Resource: http://inspiremykids.com/

·         Kindness Videos from RAK:  www.randomactsofkindness.org/kindness-videos

·         Story of California high school students who gave a bike to an elementary student who had his bike stolen twice: http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?id=9301992

·         Kindness Boomerang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU

·         How Full is your bucket Video Book (Book also in library): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5R6-2m_qHk

·         Coca-cola ad (don’t let this defer you) that actually shows quality RAKs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPhsJnn_rMk

·         Smiling at others and how it affects others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TnW0srkpcA

...And the Agents?? 

The agents have been helping me out through the day, mainly during break and recess time to post flyers around the school promoting RAK week. They have a busy week ahead of them but I know they can do it!

Here is to a successful first day of RAK Week 2014!

As always, PLEASE share your ideas and additional resources below! I love feedback!

-Ms. Sara

Positive Mistakes!

The school I am currently at uses the Character Counts! Program for our Character Education program. I found some excellent lesson ideas from the site and one of my favorites is used to teach the Responsibility Pillar (Our Pillar of the Month for November).

I used this lesson under "Positive Mistakes (4-6)" with my second graders in a Classroom Guidance lesson and I feel they really enjoyed it! It was appropriate for their level and we were really able to extend the lesson into some valuable discussions. I was very impressed with how engaged and creative they were!


With the lesson comes a free worksheet. The worksheet is pretty much a plain sheet of paper with a big black mark in the middle (to represent a mistake). Students then turn the mistake into something beautiful. We focus on the importance of fixing our mistakes and being responsible for our actions. I followed the lesson plan for the most part except I used the book, "Harriet and the Garden" By Nancy Carlson .

I gave the students a lot of freedom and allowed them to turn their paper around and be creative! Here are some of their results!

"Underwear" 

"Heel"

"Red Pear" 

"Pirate Ship"

"Dinosaur" 

"Tooth"

I was super impressed! What are some lessons you have used to teacher Responsibility?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Skits

Since my school uses Character Counts! Six Pillars of Character , I try to incorporate the Pillars into my Classroom Guidance Lessons as much as possible. This week, I used a grab bag of different items to reiterate the different kinds of Respect that we sing in our school song (Respect Yourself, Respect Others, Respect the School, Respect Learning). Then, I grouped students into four groups and they had to create skits on their type of Respect (They had to show disrespect AND respect in the same skit).

The skits were absolutely hilarious and I was very impressed with how creative the students were. With my fifth graders, I even made it a little more challenging and had them incorporate random props into their skits (hula hoop, giant lady bug, dog puppet, and an obnoxiously massive cardboard tube I found). It was a huge success.

One of the funniest things that happened was when a student was using a hula hoop in the "respect for learning" skit. He took the hula hoop and was tapping another student who was pretending to study. When she asked him to stop, he said, "Where in the rule does it say no hula hoop tapping on other people while studying?" I love my students. I love my job.