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!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school, y'all! The system I work for is still on the beautiful system of kids coming back after Labor Day, so we are just picking things up in my school system. 

I know many of you are getting into the full swing of things for this year. Feel free to share any ideas or new programs you are hoping to get off the ground this year! Personally, this year I found I will only be at one school instead of two! :D That will make it much easier to schedule lessons and time for students. I hope to be able to do more groups and individual sessions. I have also been tasked with a bulletin board for parent/student information. I plan to include some attendance facts and some quotes for parents and students.

As I started looking for quotes, I decided I wanted them to be cute and eye catching! So, I made my own with quotes found online! I've decided to share these with all of you. Click here to get a copy from my TPT store. There are 18 quotes in the following seven backgrounds. To celebrate back to school, my entire store is 10% off now through Monday!

Good luck this school year! 

Happy end of the school year!

Today is the last day of school in my county. I know I have had a wonderful year, and I hope you have as well. I hope you and your students have a wonderful summer!

Any great ideas brewing for next year at your school? Share them!

Respect: 4-6

Whew! What a crazy month this has been! As we wrap up the school year in my county, I wanted to do one last post for this year's lessons. I made a previous post about respect with my K-3 classes.

Originally I had planned to do a superhero themed respect lesson, But I love Tacky the Penguin so much, I decided last minute to adapt this lesson for my older kids! It ended up being a pretty fun lesson talking about how we are all different and how we need to respect the differences in others. 

First, I start off with a game. My kids love games! It is an adapted version of Simon Says in which only some kids get to do each one each time. I'll have students with green eyes raise their hands or have students whose favorite sport is basketball put their hand on the head. I mix up my directions, so I also tell them they have to be listening to what I'm telling them to do in addition to whether the current topic applies to them. The point of this at the end is that we are all different. I ask my students what they noticed during our game, and nearly every class manages to say how we are all different with little prompting. 


Next I read Tacky. My older students do enjoy being read to. They are more attentive during my reading than during any other time. After I read Tacky, we talk about how different Tacky was. I then ask them who thinks Tacky got picked on by his friends because he was weird or different. Most students believe he would have been. We then discuss how we shouldn't do that and I remind them how different we all were in our game. I tell them they will meet some people who are oddbirds like Tacky. They'll meet some weird people. They may like these people or the way they do things, but that does NOT mean they can treat these Tacky-like people poorly because they are different or be cruel to them because they are a little odd. I tell them I expect them to be respectful to these people.

We then switch gears and talk about how if everyone is different, they are the only them the world has. No one is like them. We talk about the word unique and what things make us unique. Their activity is a sheet with ten places for them to write unique things about themselves. I tell them these things need to be things they are proud of and that they cannot be about things they own, except for pets. I give them examples to give them some ideas. I suggest hair, eye color, hobbies, sports they play, cool abilities they have (juggling, spinning a basketball on their finger, doing a back bend, being double jointed, etc.), being short or tall, wearing glasses, having freckles, etc. I give them a personal example of still being able to buy shoes in the children's department. I tell them that I know that's somewhat weird, but it makes me unique and I'm proud of it. I think if you can give them a person example like that it really helps encourage them to think about theirs. Several of mine light up when I talk about my weird little feet! I usually have one ask if I'll take them up, which I don't. I don't need their sheets, and I want my students to remember things they are proud of about themselves. 

You can get my Tacky worksheet AND a copy of the Simon Says game here!

Happy Teacher Appreciate Week!

I want to wish all our teachers out there a 
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. 
You are on the front lines are an important support for not just your students, but also you school counselors. I greatly value all the teachers I work with and their tireless work for our students!

To celebrate this week, I have joined in the sitewide TPT sale. EVERYTHING in my store will be 20% off May 3-4, 2016. With the code included on the banner below, you can save up to 28%! What a great way to get started on next year's plans and needs!

Do you do anything to celebrate your teachers? I'd love some ideas about how to thank the teachers for supporting my program and for all they do for our students.