Tattling Again!

Last year, my tattling lesson was such a big hit with my kindergarten teachers that half of them requested the lesson again on my start of the year needs assessment. All of them said they wanted it again when I asked if they were all interested. I do their intro lessons a week before everyone else so I can do the tattling lesson for their regularly scheduled lesson time. It works out great, and they are loving it again this year! Tattling is something most younger grades struggle with, so hopefully this lesson helps with that. 

Click the link above for the lesson. The beauty of kindergarten is how easy it is to repeat a lesson. I pulled everything from last year out of the filing cabinet this morning before the first lesson. All I had to do was make copies of the coloring page and I was ready to start! 
This year I did simplify the lesson some and left the "five B's" out and tried to focus on emergencies and getting hurt as seen in the post it cards. The post it cards are the biggest hit with kids and teachers. The kids love the participation. The teachers love the examples. By the end of the lesson, they seem to understand some much better what's an emergency (a BIG deal) and what isn't! I also reused the post-it notes, which have lost a good bit of their sticky, so I took two small containers to put under the faces on the board instead of having the kids try to stick them to the board (which I found a lot of our boards had trouble with anyway). 

K-1 Intro Lessons 16-17

In an effort to complete my intro lessons before our bundle of joy arrives, I am getting started on those this week!

This year for K-1, I'm recycling part of last year's lesson. Normally I use The Rainbow Fish to teach this, but this year I didn't want to bend over with the cards so much with my rather large belly. So, I opted to adapt last year's 2nd and 3rd intro lesson for kindergarten!

I'm using the exact same power point from last year that I used with my 2nd and 3rd grade. These images are very similar to the one from my Rainbow Fish lesson. I always hesitate to use power points for my youngest students, but they've done very well with it so far! I go through the power point and talk about all the ways I can help them at the school using the images. At the end, they receive a coloring page that I created myself based on this lesson. They get to keep these to remember all the ways a school counselor can help them at school! 

The power point is available for FREE in my TPT store. This worksheet is also available in my TPT store and is my own original creation.

Lesson Sign-Ups

As I mentioned in this post, my teachers did so well this year at signing up for a time for me to visit their rooms this year. Only a handful didn't on their own. This year the process was much smoother for my teachers and I want to share how it worked at my school.

Last year, I used signupgenius.com for signing up.

I had a supervisor who recommended this when I was in internship. While I like this site, my school really needs a sign up for a day of the week and time, not a specific day of the month. I could not figure out a way for this on signupgenius.com, so we had much confusion last year on when their lessons actually were even though I supply them a calendar specifically for lessons.

This year in an effort to eliminate this confusion, I used a simple Google Sheet from Google Drive. I had several time slots over every day of the week to give teachers several options. This really seem to like this better. This was originally a template I found through Google, found here. I just changed it to suit my needs and made it in our school colors. Having made this now, I bet I could have made this on my own without the need for a template. After they all had a time, I just put two or three, up to four, a day through the month. With only two time slots for each time each day, it was very easy to spread it out over a month. 

(Click to make image bigger!)

A few of my teachers were just amazed that they could sign up and it would immediately be there for everyone to see (so no one could take their time). My school is rather large, so this seems to be the simplest way to have them all pick a time for my visits. While this worked well for my school, but every school is different! What do you do to have teachers sign up for a time for classroom lessons? What do your teachers prefer? 

A New Year

Our school is off to a great start this year! Our students returned this past Tuesday and we are having a great first week.

I have been busy getting ready for the year while allowing for the students I check in with to get settled into their new rooms and new routines! This year I am planning on doing five lessons. I will miss part of the year due to maternity leave. I'm excited for our new little one! But I'm also excited for a new year with my students.
I will begin my lessons starting next week in hopes of getting through my introductory lessons before my maternity leave starts in late October. My teachers were so great about signing up for a time this year! I'll do a post soon on what I did differently this year that seemed to work better for my staff. 

For this year, I plan to do the following for my lesson topics:

1. Intro to the Counselor
2. Bucket Filling (with a discussion about bullying)
3. Careers and Money
4. Motivation and Responsibility
5. Conflict Resolution

Be on the lookout for posts on details for each of these lessons in the months I do them! I also plan to do my tattling lesson from last year for my kindergartners. This one was a big hit with the kids and the teachers.

I've uploaded several new resources to my TPT store for this coming year, and plan to add a few more. If you're interested in any of these topics, most of my new resources are available now.

What big plans do you have for this year? What lesson topics do you plan to use and what resources do you love for those topics? Share the wealth!