Bullying Academy

Web-shot Of: http://www.bullyingacademy.org/index.cfm

Recently, I received an email advertising the Bullying Academy.  This is a grant funded, web-based program for students in grades 4th-8th.  I decided to try it out with my 4th and 5th grade classes.  First, you have to register your school, and then each student registers and receives a user name and log-in.  For my first guidance lesson, I had time to explain what the academy was, help students log-in, and then take a "pre-quiz." The pre-quiz assesses what students already know about bullying.  That's as far as we have gotten so far, but myself and my students are very excited to pick it back up next week!

Once the students take their pre-quiz, they begin a series of lesson modules that include articles, information, and videos on what bullying is, why kids bully, what to do when someone is bullying you, and cyber-bullying.  The website has "follow along" worksheets for each grade level that the students can fill out while going through the lessons.  I know that this will be important for my students to ensure they read and not just skip to the videos!  After all the students have finished the lessons, there is a post-quiz to assess what they have learned.

My students are using Ipads to complete the Bullying Academy, and I think it will be a very engaging lesson and a new way of learning about bullying.

Positive Thought Thinking Caps

Today, I started talking to 3rd graders about preparing for our state tests.  They don't start until mid-May, but 3rd grade is the 1st year they take them, and they have to take reading, math, science, and social studies.  Unfortunately, this bring lots of nervousness and test taking anxiety, which we know can actually create lower scores.  So, that's where I come in.  I plan on doing a couple classroom guidance lessons on thinking positive thoughts, study tips, following directions carefully, relaxation techniques, etc.

Today's lesson was thinking positive thoughts.  First, we read and discussed "The Attitude Patrol: A Lesson About the Importance of Positive Thinking," from the book More Lively Lessons for Classroom Sessions, by Rosanne Sheritz Sartori.  If you click on the link to the book you can view it, as well as, a sample of the lesson I read today. Next, we brainstormed positive things the kids could say to themselves right before taking a test.  They came up with a great list (I can do it, be positive, I'm smart, I'm going to get an A+, all I need to do is try my best, relax).

Finally, we made "Thinking Caps."  Below is a picture.  They folded the large size construction paper into a paper hat and then decorated them with thought bubbles that included our positive brainstorms.  I also brought in lots of stickers they could use to decorate.  At the end of the lesson, the teacher collected them and agreed to pass them back out for their next test.  I truely believe that having their positive thought thinking caps on will help to improve their confidence and scores, hopefully!! :)

Please excuse the seal. He was just my model!  The kids LOVED these hats. I'd love to hear about other creative ideas you have for helping my 3rd graders with test anxiety.

Book Fair Success

I apologize for the lack of posts this week.  We had our 5th grade writing state test, and this is my 1st year serving as Co-Testing Coordinator.  Needless to say, its been a crazy busy week! So, to reward myself for all my hard work, my sister and I took a trip to the Green Valley Book Fair, just south of Harrisonburg, Virginia. The book fair is about 2.5 hours away, but my sister is an Elementary School Librarian, and we are both obsessed with finding good children's books at affordable prices.  Here is a description from their website to give you a glimpse of just how great this book fair is.

Our Story...
Located just south of Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, the Green Valley Book Fair is a discount book outlet store featuring over 500,000 new books at incredible bargain prices. Save 60% to 90% off retail on over 30,000 different titles in more than 60 different categories - including fiction, history, health and self-help, children's books, religion, science, sports, cooking, home and garden, crafts, art, reference, nature and outdoors, and more. 

Source

Now for the fun part.....Here are the counseling books I bought:

 

These 3 books were hardback copies in GREAT condition for $5.75 or less.

I also bought Me First, Listen Buddy, Hooway for Wodney Wat, Hurty Feelings, and Batter Up Wombat, all by Helen Lester, in paperback for only $2.50 each.  The grand totoal for 8 fabulous books was only 28.00!  I'm very excited to use these books in the upcoming weeks during my guidance lessons. The kids are going to love them.  If you live anywhere near Virginia and are a book lover like me, I definitely suggest checking out the Green Valley Book Fair.

Put-up Messages

During No Name Calling Week I wrote a post on a classroom guidance lesson where I had the kids write Put-up messages to each other. I wanted to show you the bulletin board I made to post their messages on.  The students love it because they get to search for their name and kind message, and I love it because the whole school can read 100 examples of Put-ups! :) It's a win win.

Helping A New Teacher Fit In Mid-Year

One of our 3rd grade teachers moved mid-year to a new position teaching reading and math to help decrease class sizes, so someone had to be hired to take her 3rd grade position.  As you know, this can be very difficult because relationships have already been built and there is not much time for community building during the middle of the year when everyone is in the middle of SOL lessons!  So, I tried my best to help Mrs. Valentine feel welcomed at Dudley by helping with this much needed bonding process with a classroom guidance lesson.  

First, I asked the students to raise their hand if they had ever moved to Dudley (meaning they did not attend school here since Kindergarten). Surprisingly, over half of the students raised their hand. Awesome! Empathy should come easier! :) We discussed how hard it is coming to a new school where you don't know anyone's name, or where the gym, library, bathrooms, etc. are. Then, I read them the story First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg.  This story is typically read to younger students in Kindergarten or 1st grade and usually only at the beginning of the year, but it was the PERFECT book to help explain that teachers get nervous when they are new too.  The story is about a girl who doesn't want to go to her new school, because she is very nervous.  All the students think the girl is a new student, but at the end it turns out to be the teacher!

Source

Since I did this lesson on Valentine's Day, I included an activity that seems to be very popular. I cut out a heart from red construction paper and told students this is Mrs. Valentine's heart (our new teacher).  Then, I asked students what are some things that students could say or do that would hurt Mrs. Valentine's feelings?  After each response I crumpled a piece of the heart.  After the heart was balled up and in bad disrepair, I asked students what are some things they could say or do that would help Mrs. Valentine feel welcomed at Dudley.  After each kind response I straightened a part of the heart back out.  Finally, the heart started looking like a heart again, but it was still ripped in places and wrinkled, so we had a discussion about thinking before we say or do hurtful things, because even after apologizing and being kind it doesn't take away the hurt someone feels after you've been mean to them. 

Finally, I had every student fill out this All About Me Robot worksheet to help Mrs. Valentine get to know her students better.  The students liked this because they love sharing fun facts about themselves.  I created a bulletin board with a big robot on it and Mrs. Valentine filled it out with important stuff about her. Below is a picture of the board. All in all this lesson was very successful and it could be adapted for introducing a new student as well. 

 

Take A Stand: 5th Grade Bullying Lessons

To capture my students’ attention at the beginning of the lesson, I had them pretend that they were doctors (or counselors) and I was a 5^th grade girl who was coming to see them because I’ve been so sad lately.  I said, “You know when are sick or having problems you go to see a doctor or a counselor? Well, today, I’m going to be the 5^th grader and you are going to be my doctor. So pretend that I have just come into your office and sat down and you ask me what’s been bothering me.  Once I tell you what’s wrong, your job is to sort through everything you hear and tell me what you think is causing my problems.”  They were all very excited to be my doctor! J  Here is what I said:

“My name is Abby and I haven’t been feeling good lately.  I don’t want to go to school or even play in my basketball game on Saturday.  I have to go to my dad’s house tonight but I don’t want to.  He doesn’t understand any of my problems. This weekend my friends are having a sleepover, but I probably won’t even get an invitation, because last week at lunch everyone was having fun and all I wanted to talk about was my dog that died.  All in all things just aren’t going well at all!”

Then, I asked students what they thought the root of my sadness was.  Most students thought Abby was sad because her parents were divorced and her dad didn't understand her, her dog died, her friends weren't going to invite her to their sleepover, etc...They were a little surprised when I said, "Yes, those are all things that usually really upset students Abby's age, but in her case the thing that was bothering her the most was that other kids at school were calling her names everyday and bullying her.  This is why she didn't want to come to school anymore."  I explained to my students that in this "case study" Abby had serious problems, but none of them were more serious than being a victim of bullying.  I think this helped them think of the effects of bullying in a different way than they had before.

Next we did an activity from the "No Name Calling Week" lesson plans, called Response Cards. Each student got a copy of these cards and cut them apart:

Then, we talked about ways to "take a stand" and who to "ask for help." I read them a couple bullying scenarios from the lesson plan and they held up which option they would do in that situation and we discussed each one as a class.  

In my next lesson, students chose a typical bullying scenario and drew rough drafts of "Bully Comic Strips."  I got the idea from this lesson in the "No Name Calling Week" plans.  They had 4-6 blocks for their comic. The first box set up the setting for their bullying scenario and the second box included the bullying.  In the third box the students were to illustrate a character either taking a stand or asking for help.  And, in the fourth box, they drew the conclusion.  We used Lego Comic Builder to create our comics. Here is my example: 

New Year's Resolution Videos and Penguins

I realize this post is coming a little late to help anyone with New Year's resolution lessons plans, seeing that it is already the 27th, but hey there's always next year, right!? After returning from our holiday break, my guidance lessons focused on goal setting, tying it into New Year's resolutions.

In my 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes we had a New Year's party where we set 3 goals.  To make the lesson more engaging and fun for students, I brought in party hats, crowns, and necklaces that I had at home from our New Year's Eve celebration. This was a great way to "re-use" my party favors.  I bought the party kit at CVS for about 5 dollars.

Once the party favors were passed out we discussed what New Year's resolutions are, and I explained that they are the same thing as setting goals.  This led into a lesson on how to set appropriate goals and make a plan for accomplishing them. I created this worksheet for each student to complete. They set 3 goals: 1 for school, 1 for friendship, and 1 for home.

To conclude the lesson, I video-tapped each student reading their goals and put the clips together into really cute class videos using Windows Movie Maker.  The students LOVED watching their video during their next guidance lesson, which also helped with the lesson by reinforcing the goals they had set the week before.  I got inspiration for doing the videos from this video on SchoolTube. After watching this clip you will have a good idea of what our videos looked like, but I didn't feel comfortable posting the actual videos online due to student privacy concerns. (It's unfortunate, because they are so cute)

With my 1st and 2nd grade classes I stuck with the New Year's party theme and also taught them how to set goals and why goals are so important in school and in the real world.  They created these cute "Penguin Resolutions Reminders" from EdHelper.

 

 

Tracking Data with NoteCounselor

Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere in a remote forest, you have heard about the importance of accountability in the world of education.  School counseling, is no exception.  This is only my 3rd year as a school counselor, and the budget has had me worried every year about keeping my job.  My 1st year, the "higher ups" wanted the elementary counselors to show how we had spent our year; how many students we helped, parents we met with, guidance classes we had taught, etc. Luckily, I had tracked my sessions and classes the "old fashioned" way with paper and pencil notes.  After submitting our data, administration was able to see the impact we have on our school community, and thankfully, counselors were not put on the list to be cut in our county.

This year, another elementary counselor who works in our county told me that she uses NoteCounselor (created by Amanda Lee Chambers).  Three years ago, when she was asked to send in her documentation, all she had to do was pull up a yearly report, with just one click of the mouse!  The day she told me about this program, I went online at http://notecounselor.com and ordered it. Four days later, I got NoteCounselor in the mail and started using it, and I would definitely recommend it to all school counselors.  It provides a very simple format, using Microsoft Access, that allows you to keep notes, track individual and group counseling sessions, log classroom guidance lessons, and much more.  It also categorizes task as indirect and direct counseling services and prints reports accordingly making it easy maintain a comprehensive program at your school.

Take some time to visit http://notecounselor.com/.

Does anyone else use this program? If so, leave a review here and, if not, tell us what program you do use.

**noteCounselor, LLC copyright © 2004, 2007, 2010 Amanda Chambers

**Microsoft Office Access is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

A 2nd grader's perspective on Weather

The following post is an email I received recently from a parent of a second grader at my school.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.  I think you will find this story to be both hilarious and eye opening.  Its amazing what those little brains are soaking up while we are up there teaching!

Katy’s second grade class has been learning about weather this week and apparently, she is listening quite well.  As she and I were getting ready to study she told me with excitement, “I already know ALL about it!” I decided to drill her on it just to see what all she knew, this is our conversation. (I stopped her right after she started so could grab a pencil and paper to, “take notes so I won’t miss anything.”)

Katy- “Did you know that heat from the sun makes water evacuate? It’s true.  You see, evacuation is when a liquid, you know, like water, changes into a gas, you can call it water vapors too.  I guess because it’s a gas it has to get out quickly.”

Mom- (Trying not to laugh)

Katy- “What? That’s what evacuation means, get out quickly.”

Mom- “Yes, evacuation means to get out quickly, please keep going.”

Katy- “Okay, well we have also learned about concentration.”

Mom- “Concentration?”

Katy- “ Yes, concentration. (eyes roll), it’s when the gas or water vapors, same thing, changes into water droplets.  Humm, I guess it’s hard to do that, change from liquid to gas then back to liquid.  I guess that’s why God named it concentration, I bet He has to think really hard to do it.”

Mom- (Straight faced) “You think?”

Katy- (Also straight faced) “Well yeah, don’t you think so?”

Mom- “I’m sure He does.  Keep going please, I’m really learning a lot here.”

Katy- “Well, there are 3 types of clouds, Curious Clouds, Cumulus Clouds and ummm, Straights Clouds.”

Mom- “Can you describe each one?”

Katy- “Sure, Curious Clouds are thin and feathery, I guess someone was curious how God does that so they named them Curious Clouds. Cumulus Clouds are my favorite ones, God uses them to make the God Show that me and Trevor like to watch.  He makes pictures in them for kids to look at and changes them all time so we don’t get bored, especially when we are riding in the car.  I don’t know how they got the name Cumulus Clouds though.  Straights Clouds are the last ones, they are like gray blankets in the sky because they mean rain or snow is coming and you might need a blanket.  They kind of look like straight walls too so I guess that’s why they named them Straights Clouds.”

Mom- (Still writing frantically so I don’t miss anything!) “I would have named them blanket clouds.”

Katy- “HEY!  I THOUGHT SO TOO! Heh, great minds think alike!  Let’s see, OH YEAH, HUMILITY!”

Mom- “Humility?”

Katy- “Yeah, I don’t know why they call it that, it’s not even funny.  It’s just where the water vapors/gas are in the air, that’s not funny.  Well, I guess it was to somebody.  Oh, I know, maybe it’s the OTHER kind of funny, you know, like strange/weird/odd, that kind of funny.  Maybe they couldn’t think of the right word so they said humility ‘cause it means funny too.  I get it now.  Heh!”

Mom-  (Laughing now!) “I bet you’re right!”

Katy- “I know, right! (Laughing!) HUMILITY!  HAHAHAHAHA!

Mom- “Please, keep going.”

Katy- “Well, hummm, oh, Participation, it’s any kind of water that falls from the sky like rain, sleet, hell or snow.  Why do they call it “Hell” Mommy?

Mom- “Not H-E-L-L, it’s H-A-I-L, it’s spelled differently and pronounced a bit different too.”

Katy- “Oh, that’s good.  Anyway, in order for it to do any of that, the weather, concentration, clouds, water vapors, humility, they all have to participate, you know, join in, so it all works together like a team.  HAHA!, A WEATHER TEAM!”

Mom- “Good one!”

Katy- “Thanks!  Well, if too much of it participates at the same time, it causes a flood usually in just a short amount of time.  Remember?  We just saw one on tv last week.”

Mom- “I remember.  It was bad wasn’t it?  I wonder what those people will do?”

Katy- “Well I know.  They will wait for a “dryout”!”

Mom- (Please don’t let me laugh!)  “A “dryout”?”

Katy- “Yes, a “dryout” is when it quits flooding and there is no rain or anything for a long time and everything just drys up, you know, a “dryout.”  Sometimes though, it can last too long and the plants and stuff start to wither up and it dies.  “Dryouts” aren’t too good unless you’ve had a flood then you want it and don’t mind the plants and stuff drying out ‘cause you can just plant more and water them with your watering hose like we do.”

Mom- “I’m sure.  Tell me more.”

Katy- “Well, that’s all we’ve learned so far, we just have to study it now because we have a test on Thursday.  I’m going to make an A+!”

Mom- “Well, If I was your teacher, I’d sure give you an A+, maybe even an A++!”

Katy- “REALLY?”

Mom- “YOU BET!”

Katy- “Thanks Mommy!  Did you write down everything I told you about weather?  You can look at it when you want to know what kind of weather we are having and you’ll know.”

Mom- (Loving this kid more than anything in the world!) “EVERY WORD!  I didn’t miss a bit.” (This is where my  medical transcription degree really helped!) ”

Katy- “Good.  I love learning about weather!”

Mom- “It sure sounds like you do!  I think though,  that maybe we need to go over your study guide together a little bit.  Okay?”

Katy- “Sure, but I’m telling you, I already know it all!”

Mom (Hugging her and knowing I’ll never be able to thank God enough for her!)  “God has great plans for you one day!”

Katy- “I know He does and I can’t wait!”

How blessed am I that I was chosen out of all the other mothers in this world, to be her mother?  What have I done that was so deserving?  I will never be able to thank God enough for trusting me with that honor.  I just pray that I can help guide her in the way that God is trusting me to do.  She is already such a beautiful light in this world.  Yes, I am truly blessed!