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. 

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.

Upper Grades Intro

My last batch of lessons began today. I started my upper grade intro to the counselor lessons in 4th grade. 
I wanted a game for the older kids, so I decided on Jeopardy! I start off by seeing what they think my job might involve, and then I use a Powerpoint Jeopardy game, which you can get here. This questions for this game are adapted from: https://musiccityschoolcounselor.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/133/


I only use one round of the game and a final Jeopardy round. My categories are: 

1. Confidentiality with questions about when I keep secrets and what the word means. The daily double is in the category and asks the students to define confidentiality.
2. Bullies and feelings with questions about how I can help with feelings and what we can do about bullies.
3. What's my job with questions about who I help, more about how I can help, and how I am different from a principal.
4. Come see me with questions about where I am, kids that will come see me, and the days I am at their school
5. Help me with questions about the kind of things kids come see me for, what kind of lessons I teach, and how they can come see me.

These questions aren't worded in a way for the standard Jeopardy answer, "What is ____?" However, it is a fun version of the game and a great way to teach older students about what a school counselor does. The Powerpoint I uploaded to TPT already has all the links, so each slide has link to the main slide with the board. The daily double will link to the question and the question back to the main slide. That way the students can make their wager before seeing the questions. I even put in a Youtube file with the Jeopardy music for Final Jeopardy.

There may be kiddos who have never played, so I would explain the rules just in case. I divide the class in half for teams. I try to give each child a chance to answer a question if they want to. I often actually skip the Final Jeopardy wager for time sake. I do the final question like the others and have them raise their hands. If I had them talk it over and write it down, I would be more likely to do the wager.  I remind them not to yell out because I only call on raised hands. They wouldn't want to give the answer away! If you have buzzers handy, they would be great for this! I keep score on the white board. I pick one student to start with, and then the ones that answer correctly get to pick the next question. For the Daily Double, I let the child who picks it wager, but it is open to either team to answer. That's the change I made least like the actual game.

2nd Intro

One of my second grade teachers asked me to do my intro lesson early in her room. She had some sad babies that needed to know me and what my job at their school is! So here is how my 2nd and 3rd grade lessons work:

I start by introducing myself and telling them what my job is. Many of them also did not know what a school counselor does. I use a powerpoint for this one. The kids really enjoy the pictures. I try to make it fun like a game. 


This lesson is also adapted from The Inspired Counselor. The powerpoint has 12 slides with pictures of different parts of my job. This list is based on the list of objects on The Inspired Counselor blog:

• "Finding Nemo ("just keep swimming") [I used Dory]
• Dumbo (great listener)
• puzzle pieces (help put the pieces together)
• heart (care about all of the students)
• Frozen characters ("Let it go!")
• Star (reach for the stars and achieve goals)
• angry birds (anger management)
• happy face (help you be happy to be at school)
• tissue (dry up tears when you're sad)
• Bandaid (help when you're hurting)
• Funny glasses (think about things from a different perspective) [I used a mask]
• eraser (cant change your past mistakes, but I can help you make better decisions next time)
• lock (I keep your secret, unless the secret will hurt you or someone else)"

On the secrets page, I also include a photo of the poster hanging in my office with the limits to confidentiality. 

Check out my post on my confidentiality poster here!

I also include pictures of my office and discuss with the students how to get to my office.. I tell them they can leave me a note or tell their teacher if they need to see me. I finish by telling them that they are never in trouble when coming to my office. Mine is not the office they go to if they are in trouble! 

I finish this lesson with an activity sheet. I use this to determine not only if the students learned anything, but how effective my lesson was in teaching them about my job. The blank where they can say something they want to talk about can help identify students that need to be seen.

A FREE copy of the powerpoint and my lesson plan is available and can be edited to fit the needs of your lesson. The activity sheet is also available as well as a copy for use with older kiddos. Check out my TPT store to snag these!

Intro to Intros!

I started my introduction to the counselor lessons this week. They are off to a great start! The bulk of my lessons won't start until October, but I had some kindergarten teachers ask me to come do a tattling lesson. Once offered to all the kindergarten teachers, of course they were all interested in it. So kindergarten is getting intro lessons early!


For kindergarten, I use one of my favorite kid's books. The Rainbow Fish!

There are all sorts of lessons you could use this book for, but it also works for an introduction to what I do as a counselor. Adapted from The Inspired Counselor, I begin by telling the kids my name and what my job is. I ask them if any of them know what being a school counselor means. Most do not, especially in kindergarten! Then I tell them that's what we will learn about today!
Read The Rainbow Fish to them. I always stop and talk about how unkind Rainbow Fish is to the little blue fish and how sad he is when he has no friends. I ask the kids what happened in the book when I'm finished. Then I ask who helped the Rainbow Fish. Of course the octopus did! I tell them I am like the octopus. I am a helper at their school. I am here to help them so they can do their best learning while at school. Next I do an activity similar to The Inspired Counselor and have eight random students draw a card out of bag with a picture on it. My pictures are very similar to her worksheet for this age. I try to point out that an octopus has eight legs when I tell them about the objects. I ask the students what they think it means. They do have some great ideas! I make sure I explain what each one means. 
I have them touch their nose so I can tell they are listening to hear two very important things about my job. I tell them they are never in trouble coming to see me and tell them the exclusions to confidentiality (in kindergarten language of course). 
We finish with a coloring page. The Inspired Counselor also has a great worksheet/coloring page for K-1, as well as older grades, in her TPT store. Check it out!
Such a fun lesson for little ones! I love her idea about using objects instead of cards. I may do that next year. The kiddos seem to enjoy the lesson and seem to understand the lesson.
I have a FREE copy of the lesson plan completed on the ASCA template for this lesson in my TPT store. Credit given to The Inspired Counselor and ASCA on the lesson plan.