NEW ASCA National Model Webinar!

The new ASCA National Model is officially available for purchase! What better way for novice, seasoned, and inquiring counselors to prepare for the upcoming academic year then to attend a webinar to learn about the changes in terminology and updates to the National Model. To learn more and register for the webiner click here and be sure to get your copy to access the newest tools in the school counseling profession!

Testing Pep Rally

Before spring break, the local minor league baseball team came to our school to host 2 pep rallies!! The K-2 Pep Rally focused on summer reading and preparing for the transition to the next grade. The 3-5 Pep Rally focused on preparing for state testing. For the 3-5 rally, we started off with students singing the testing songs they learned/practiced in music and classroom guidance. For both rallies, students and teachers participated in different activities; including, the fry toss, hula hoop relay, webkins toss, vacation relay, and the pretzel toss. To end both assemblies they enjoyed watching teachers sumo wrestle! The pep rallies were a great opportunity for students to get excited for upcoming transitions and have some fun before state testing. We will certainly ROCK the test!!

4th & 5th grade musical TeSt PrEp!

I had the opportunity to collaborate with my friend and colleague Jenny, the music teacher at my school, to rewrite some popular songs (making them about testing), record her singing them, and both of us cover them during classroom guidance/music. The 4th grade song was the Lazy Song originally by Bruno Mars and 5th grade sang Test Time Baby , originally Ice Ice Baby from Vanilla Ice. :) Music is a great way to help students remember key points of testing (and other important concepts) in a fun and catchy way! I so enjoyed collaborating with the music teacher and look forward to doing it again in the future.

During classroom guidance, 4th graders also did a skit about test taking from Skits, Raps, & Poems for the School Counselor. 5th grade completed the activity Keys to Success from Puzzle Pieces: Classroom Guidance Connection K-5 where emphasis was placed on following directions, concentrating, and thinking before making a selection. Even though covering testing strategies isn't the most exhilarating topic, by introducing material in a fun and engaging way, students (and the counselor) wont shudder when the words 'Today we're going to talk about test taking strageties' come up.

Test StReSs First Aid w/ 3rd grade!

With testing season upon us, and the 3rd graders experiencing state testing for the first time, I introduced them to my 'Test Stress First Aid Kit' created using Puzzle Pieces: Classroom Guidance Connection K-5. In this activity, students identified different items within the first aid kit that they can use to help them be successful at taking tests; items included: a picture of an island (positive thoughts/happy memories), a pair of glasses (have all your tools with you, look at the teacher/follow along/don't move ahead), a stethoscope (listen to the teacher/directions), pencils (be prepared, use number 2 pencils that are provided), alarm clock (get to school on time, take your time), plastic food items (eat a healthy breakfast), ice pack (chill out, keep your cool), a pillow (get a good nights sleep), a stress ball (don't stress/relaxation techniques), and a picture of a brain (think about the answers, process of elimination). Using visuals is a great way to keep students engaged and to use various learning styles to help them remember what we discussed. At the end of the lesson we sang "Don't Worry Be Happy" with the words rearranged about testing. The words were obtained from the ASCA listserve and the music was provided by my counseling friend, Deanna that collaborated with a teacher to sing/record the music.

Pasta 4 Pennies

February 6-24th we collected change for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Pasta 4 Pennies is a great way to get students involved and help make a difference in the lives of children suffering from Leukemia. No matter how much or how little a student was able to contribute, every penny certainly added up!!! The class that won the pasta party from Olive Garden collected over $400 with the school total of $3,907.94!!! What an amazing amount of money raised in 3 short weeks. Our school really does ROCK!!

Learning about good blood cells during the Pasta 4 Pennies Assembly

Bad blood cells at the assembly

Captain Chemo saving the day!

5th grade Internet Safety

A special thank you to Ms. Fowler, Internet Safety Education Coordinator from the State Office of the Attorney General for taking the time to come to our school to facilitate a parent night and speak to our 5th graders about Internet Safety. It is very apparent that your heart is with education, everyone really found the information you shared to be so valuable! Thank you for the pencils, brochures, and parent/child internet safety contracts- they will be of great value when parents talk with their children about appropriate use of the internet.

Self Esteem with Adolescent Girls

I recently had the opportunity to be the guest speaker for a Girl Power Group at B Balanced LLC. The Girl Power Group was lead by B Balanced owner Brittany Todd (ACE, RYT). During the group, girls participate in fitness, nutrition, and self-esteem building exercises. Recently they focused on goal setting and she requested that I speak with the girls about self-esteem. When planning my hour and a half presentation/discussion, I naturally thought about the Self Esteem Toolkit by Dove and particularly the video that was created about body image and the media. I adapted the toolkit for my presentation and before ending the session with an open discussion, included from the School Counselor Blog "It's what's on the inside that counts" activity. At the end of the discussion, Brittany had the girls complete an interactive quiz about food and nutrition then concluded the 3 hour group with an hour of Zumba with the girls. I had a wonderful time collaborating with a passionate health and wellness professional that shares my vision of supporting young women in developing physical and emotional health.

Career Day 2012

Friday was Career Day from 8-11 where we had over 45 presenters share their career with CD-5th grade students. Each presenter was assigned to a classroom and classes did five rotations of twenty minute presentations with ten minute breaks/transition time between each. After the 5th presentation students went outside for the 'vehicle loop' where they got to see different vehicles the presenters brought, including: a fire truck, electric company bucket truck, hot rod car, police car, undercover car, etc. All presenters wore their work uniform and shared visuals, tools, and did hands-on activities that were developmentally and age appropriate. A lot of the presenters were parents of students at the school but many were also community members that agreed to come and share information with students about their job; including, a local meteorologist and the minor league baseball team. In the afternoon students wrote thank you cards and completed other career activities that were provided for them. It's a wonderful day that the students look forward to each year that allows them to see the connection between school and the world of work. Career day is one of the main events coordinated by the school counselors each year that exposes and educates students on different jobs.



Classroom Mgmt./Teacher Support

Collaboration with teachers is such a vital part of what a school counselor does. One way I like to collaborate is by being in the classroom (beyond classroom guidance lessons) and doing activities that support the teacher and the students. Having classroom meetings is one effective way to build collaboration with the teacher, students, and develop classroom structure. Classroom meetings can be beneficial in teaching students how to work better together (conflict resolution) and develop unity/a positive working relationship. Before winter break, I had the opportunity to facilitate classroom meetings (10 total) for 30 minutes each morning in an upper elementary classroom that was having some difficulty with behavior and following directions. During these morning meetings we did activities on conflict resolution, compliments (the different types, giving/receiving), listening skills, and behavior/consequences. It was so nice to work closely with the teacher, develop a stronger working relationship with the students, and see how they (students and teacher) enhanced their relationship with each other. How do you provide support to teachers that are new or are in need of behavioral/climate assistance?

Check out some of the classroom management resources I use in my store under 'teacher resources!'

Social Skills with ED class

Each month I meet with the Emotionally Disabled (ED) class to do social skills activities with them. Oftentimes, I cover topics that are covered during classroom guidance but I also take the opportunity to do activities tailored to the needs of these students. Through collaboration with the ED teachers, I determine what the current need is and select activities based on their feedback. One student in particular has been having difficulty with transition (he doesn't want to transition OUT of the ED class). To help support his success and to promote his attempt in transitioning out of the class, I focused on this topic with the students today. We read Julia Cook's book, Don't Be Afraid To Drop and talked about the different mix of feelings we experience with transition. We also discussed the pros and cons of transition and how we experience transition all the time. Students had the opportunity to draw a picture of a time they had to transition. I encouraged the students that since they were able to successfully transition before, they will be able to use those skills learned through their previous experience to help them with transition in the future. We also discussed how transition is important to grow as an individual and to not miss out on fun, new, and exciting opportunities that come along. If you have a student struggling with transition, this book is a great resource to use!

Data & Small Group Counseling

As mentioned in a previous post, in my accountability plan for this year, I'm using data to drive the small groups I implement. With the winter break quickly approaching, I'm beginning to wrap-up my first round of groups for the year. Three of the groups I've implemented (one academic, two behavior) have focused on school success. To determine the participants, I've used my experience on the school data team to assist me. I've also found that implementing groups through data demonstrates how counselors play a vital role in the school, to assist teachers in the academic and behavioral development of students. Using the RtI model is quite simple and user friendly when the components are understood.

Academics- During the data team meetings, strategies to support identified red and yellow zone students are discussed. As a school counselor, I'm able to take note of these individuals and share strategies I'm implementing to support these students. One is through small group counseling of study skills. I'm happy to say, all students that (as of the beginning of the year) were only receiving classroom intervention (while progress monitoring) participated in 30 minutes of small group counseling once a week for 8 weeks. During the group (often during lunch, specials, or recess- I interchanged the times so they didn't miss the same activity each week), we cover different topics including: work habits, listening skills, organization, test taking strategies, preparing your body for learning, and homework plans. I've used a variety of resources to implement this topic in a fun and interactive way. One of my favorite resources for academic group counseling is called, I Didn't Know I Could Be the Child Left Behind. I've used this resource several times now for academic groups and it's easy to use, a quick and easy resource for me, and most of all- something the kids really enjoy from grades 2-5. I'm looking forward to looking at the data again to determine if participation in these groups played a role in increasing academic performance in these students.

Behavior- To determine participants in the behavior group, I looked at the total number of logged behavioral referrals from last school year. There were a total of 590 write-ups among 201 students (school population from last year was 821). The results are very similar to the different tiers of RtI; 93% of our school population was identified as green zone (1-2 behavioral write-ups), 4% are yellow zone (3-5 write-ups), and 3% are red zone (6 or more write-ups). I identified all red and yellow zone students and what the write-ups were for. These individuals have been participating in a school success group focused on different behavioral strategies. Thanks to collaboration with the school librarian, we will begin a book club with students using Scholastic- Muhammad Ali: Go the Distance! books. I used these books at a previous school for behavioral support and the students loved them! Hopefully, follow up data will demonstrate a decrease in behavioral write-ups for students participating in this group.

To learn more about RtI please visit some of my favorite sites/blogs: RtI Network, Musings of an Urban School Psychologist, and Notes from the School Psychologist.

School counselors help make students teachable- facilitating small groups is one component of the multi-faceted job we have; however, it's important for EVERYONE to remember that we all have things going on in our lives (especially students!) that make it difficult to learn and/or make the best behavioral choices. Getting to the root of those problems is necessary before ANY intervention can be successful!

Angel Tree 2011

As our schools unofficial community resource liaison, I have the opportunity to coordinate a lot of activities that support the community and particularly our school community. This year's angel tree is being sponsored by a community business (specializing in home lighting). It was so wonderful (and helpful to me) for them to contact us and ask how they could help! Mid-November (through our school newsletter) I informed families that if they needed holiday assistance and were not receiving support from another organization, to contact me to be a part of the angel tree. I just contacted the coordinator of the lighting business that was so eager to provide assistance and gave her the gender, age, grade, clothing sizes, and wish list items of students and their siblings. I'm so glad to be a part of a community where people are willing to help and give back. Come mid-December the parents that contacted (who were very humble and modest) will be able to pick up the items to give to their children on Christmas. I don't know about you, but it is quite frustrating to see people so focused on "black Friday," "cyber-Monday," and decorating a tree before Thanksgiving (sorry if I offended you)....but isn't giving back and focusing on what we're thankful for what this season is all about (among other things)?! This season makes me hopeful that in the bottom of people's hearts, they wonder how we can give back and help those in need....isn't that what this season is all about anyway!?!

Each angel represents an angel we will help this holiday season!

Teachers promoting Careers

It's always such a joy to walk into a classroom and see a counseling related resource I use with students visible in the room. It's also wonderful when teachers do classroom instructional activities that correlate and support the counseling curriculum. I walked down the third grade hall the other day and saw posted outside a classroom a writing lesson that was done on careers and had to share. The students had the opportunity to write about what career/job they wanted when they grow up. They then using card stock people cutouts, decorated the card stock in the career they wrote about. It's very apparent by looking at the pictures below that the students really got into this activity. When talking to the teacher she said she plans to use these cutouts for other activities throughout the year.

Seeing this really makes me excited about our upcoming school-wide Career Day in January! :)

Safety Lesson from Fire Educator

A special thank you to Kathy Nieuwhaus (County Fire Educator) for coming to our school this week to do a lesson with kindergarten students on fire safety. A video was shown to students on fire safety/awareness and several volunteer fire fighters also did a demonstration and role-play with students on how they rescue them from danger. They even left souvenier fire chief hats for each students to keep as a reminder that fire fighters are their friend and ready to help when 911 is called. We look forward to having them back during Career Day in January!

Parent Program on Personal Safety

Next week we will begin our last rotation of classroom guidance before the winter break and it will be on personal safety. To introduce this series, I will be co-facilitating a parent program this evening with my wonderful co-counselor! We will be sharing with parents the Yello Dyno curriculum that we will be using to teach students about personal safety. This program was purchased for the counseling department with money donated from a local church to the school. It's a wonderful program that teaches about 'tricky people' and being safe in a developmentally appropriate way that is easy for kids to understand. Come join us this evening from 5:30-6:30 to learn more about Yello Dyno!

Food Drive Results

This week also concluded the Thanksgiving Food Drive collection for the Salvation Army that we had for the past three weeks. I'm proud to report that as a school, we collected 1,080 non-perishable items to support members of our community! Great job everyone and thanks for your support with this initiative.

Red Ribbon Recap!

We had a very successful Red Ribbon Week this year with participation from so many students and staff! Here are the highlights:

Monday

To kick-off RRW we had a PBIS assembly where HTCs Nicole Hyman came with McGruff the crime dog and members of the fire department talked with students about safety.

Students also received Red Ribbons that said they show 'Good Character' by being Drug Free! (It was a great continuation from Character Counts Week.)

Tuesday

"Sock it to Drugs Day!" AKA "Crazy Sock Day!"

Wednesday

"Put a Cap on Drugs Day!"

Thursday

Gotta love faculty participation!

"Slam Dunk Drugs are Junk"

Students enjoyed showing off their favorite sports teams!

Friday 

"Everyone Wear Red Day!"

Friday also concluded the 3rd annual door contest!

Thanks to everyone for participating and showing the importance of being healthy and drug free!

Red Ribbon Week

To support the importance of being drug free and healthy, our school celebrates National Red Ribbon Week each year, the last week of October. This year, October 24-28th is Red Ribbon Week!

Each day on the morning announcements there will be a special message regarding Red Ribbon Week.  We will also be saying the Red Ribbon Week Pledge after the Pledge of Allegiance.  Here is a list of the activities that we are happy to be participating in! As an incentive to promote participation, teachers tally the number of students that participate each day and the top 5 classes that have the most participation will receive a prize and the teachers will receive a duty free lunch! 

Below is a list of the activities we will be doing at our school.

Monday:  Everyone receive a Red Ribbon to kick off Red Ribbon Week.  Also, students will read then post the Red Ribbon Week History somewhere in their classroom.

Tuesday:  “Sock it to Drugs Day!” Everyone will wear the 'craziest' socks they have!!! Students will sign, decorate, and cut out red ribbons, then put them up in the hallway outside of their classroom.  We hope to have ribbons up all over the school!

Wednesday:  “Put a Cap on Drugs Day!” Everyone wear a hat or cap! Students will read and sign the class pledge to be drug free and post it somewhere in their classroom.

Thursday: “Slam Dunk Drugs are Junk!” Wear a favorite sports team jersey or logo. During writing students will write about why it’s important to be healthy and drug free. Door contest concludes at end of the day.

Friday: “Everyone Wear Red Day!” 3^rd annual door contest winners (judged by PTO) will be selected and announced!! (1 winner per grade- classroom prizes awarded)

Other ideas:

         Writing Prompts:

            “I promise to live a drug free life by…”

            “The choice for me is drug free because…”

            “If someone asks me to use drugs (including cigarettes) I can say…”

         Brainstorming Ideas:
             “Ways I can respect myself…”

             “List of better things to do than drugs…”

             “How does character tie in with being drug free??

I'm looking forward to posting pictures to showcase all the participation of students and faculty at our school!

Character Counts Week!

October 17-21st is Character Counts Week, to celebrate my co-counselor and I collaborated with students, administrators, the school librarian/media specialist, custodian's, teacher's, bus driver's and others to host the morning show each day emphasizing a different character trait. This year we became a PBIS school where we look for students demonstrating positive behavior (that goes with our school motto) and reward them with dolphin dollars that they can turn into 'Rocky's Cove' for a variety of prizes/incentives. Our school's motto is that it R.O.C.K.S. : Respectful, Organized, Cooperative, Knowledgeable, and Safe. Each day during Character Counts Week we will be focusing on one of these traits. Monday- Respectful, Tuesday- Organized, Wednesday- Cooperative, etc.

For the morning show we recorded the individuals mentioned above on a Flip and converted the mp4 videos to be compatible in a DVD player using a program called DVD Burning Xpress. The converting took a while but once complete, we had a DVD of five morning shows one to play each day. The program is great, it allows you to fade in and out of different clips, add music, background pictures on the main window, titles, etc. The main screen when put into the DVD player is like a chapter menu for a movie which allows you to select which video clip you want to watch.

Monday- Responsibility- Dolphin Council members giving an overview of the week and talking about how to show each character trait in different locations of the building followed by my co-counselor reading "Mind your Manners in School"

Tuesday- Organized- Several teachers, a custodian, and administrator share what being organized means to them.

Wednesday- Cooperative- Members of the Dolphin Council share what it means to be cooperative in the cafeteria and I read "The Gigantic Turnip"

Thursday- Knowledgeable- Members of the Dolphin Council share what it means to be knowledgeable on the bus then several 5th graders did the rap, 'Get on the bus' from the book "Skits, Raps, & Poems for the School Counselor"

Friday- Safe- Members of the Dolphin Council share what it means to be safe on the playground followed by the librarian reading "The Recess Queen"

It is our hope that Character Counts Week educates students on different character traits and encourages all to promote positive character this week and always!

Thanksgiving Food Drive

Fall is such a wonderful time of year and my favorite season, with it comes some of my favorite initiatives to support the community while building community and character of students at our school. Each year we do a Thanksgiving food drive to support a community agency in our area. This year from October 3rd-28th we're asking students to bring in canned food and non-perishable items to support the Salvation Army. When students bring in items they will be placed in a designated location in their classroom, they can also put them in the box in the front office.

Each Friday members of the student council go around to each classroom to collect the items. This week I look forward to meeting with them to create posters to display around the school, morning show announcements, and develop some sort of incentive to promote donations. I look forward to sharing the amount of goods we collect!

The holiday's are a wonderful time of year to be thankful for the things we have while also providing support to others in our community. Help us help others to enjoy a healthy and delicious meal!