Intros Pt. 2 16-17

Whew! I have been a busy school counselor! I have been working through the remainder of my intro lessons for this year and trying to get to as many students as I can before my maternity leave begins. I have about 2.5 weeks left!

Due to my pregnant state, I have taken my intro lessons easier this year. See this post for my younger lesson. For my 2nd-6th graders, I've used the same power point with a developmentally appropriate activity to go along with it. It uses true/false statements to review what a school counselor does. Many of the statements are true, but some are false, and some are just not things a counselor helps with in most cases. 

I've been pleased to note how much my students remember about what a school counselor does! Last year was like starting fresh with my students. My predecessor did little to no classroom lessons, so many had no idea who she was or what she did. I started out aiming to fix that. This year I thought they might need to be retaught, but many of them remembered all the ways I can help!

I love doing an intro lesson as my first lesson, though. It gives new students the opportunity to learn what I do and it never hurts to review with my returning students. My favorite part of these lessons, though, is the activity. I give the students an opportunity to tell me what they'd like to talk to me about. While I get a lot of "no" written, cute pictures, and genuine love, I do get many requests to talk about things. Often things they really need to process that I had no idea about! For the older ones, I also give them a chance to tell me what they need this year. What do they hope to learn? What do they need to be successful? 

How do you like to start off the year at your school? What lessons/topics work well for your students?

Check out my TPT store for this power point as well as the developmentally appropriate activity sheet where the students tell me what they want to talk about.