Awesome iPad Apps for School Counselors

I have only had my iPad for 1 year, but now I don't think I could survive without it!  I'll admit before buying one I thought, "what's the big deal? It can't be that great" I was wrong. It is that great.  I'd like to share with you some of my favorite apps that I use everyday.  This list will come in very handy for personal use as well as for your counseling program.

The first app I want to tell you about is Notability. It is only 1.99 and well worth the money.  I kept waiting and waiting for Pages, the Microsoft word app, to go down in price but since it never did I tried notability and I've been very happy with it.  Notability allows you to organize your documents in categories and sub-folders that are automatically color coded!  Also, taking notes is fun because you can change the look of the paper and font, and you can draw, highlight, and add pictures to your notes. I plan to use Notability to keep track of staff meeting notes, lesson plans, counseling ideas and for anything else I need to take notes on. Below are a couple screen shots of how I used Notability at the ASCA Conference.

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The next app I use everyday is Pinterest.  I'm not going to say too much about this app because I assume all of you are already using it.  Pinterest is the number one way I stay energized, creative, and on top of the latest ideas in education, counseling, and technology.

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Password Manager Free is an app that allows you to store all your usernames/login names and passwords.  At school, it seems like we have to change our passwords every three months or so and some passwords are not allowed to match which makes if VERY difficult to keep up with them all. This app is a life saver! You do have to remember one password, because it is a password protected app, but this allows all your information to stay more secure. You can create your own categories with picture icons and when you click on them it gives you your login information. Amazing!

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Qrafter and I-nigma are both good apps to scan and read QR codes. They are very kid friendly and you can use QR codes in any guidance lesson to help engage your students. You can also add QR codes to parent newsletters, business cards, or your website with links to your contact information or other online resources. I use www.qrstuff.com to create my QR codes.

AppsGoneFree is a great app to check daily.  This app shows which apps are free that typically cost a fee.

Scribble Press is a digital storytelling app that has many uses in school counseling.  They have some great templates for students to create stories that give students the opportunity to share information about themselves.  Students can create personalized books about their selves, friends, parents, future, and much more.  Once books are created they can be saved and shared in ibooks, email, etc... This app would be perfect during classroom guidance, small group, and individual counseling! Below is an example of a page that I created. I'm thinking about creating a book to use to introduce myself at the beginning of the year!

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Professor Garfield has a series of apps that are very engaging for students and would be a great addition to your lessons.  Specifically for guidance related topics, I would suggest Professor Garfield Online Safety and  Professor Garfield Cyberbullying.  Both of these apps are free and they begin with a creative comic strip students can read related to the topic and then there are questions that follow to check for understanding. This app will take your lesson from sub-par to out of this world! Below are just a few examples from the comic and activity.

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I have found many cute apps that I plan on using with younger grades to teach emotions/feelings.  All of these would be perfect to use to reinforce concepts in a whole class setting or in small group and individual counseling.

Moody Monster Manor lets kids design their own monster. They can pick a body shape, colorful pattern, eyes, nose, and mouth for their monster. This would be so much fun to have students design different monsters to portray different feelings.  This app also has interactive scenarios showing a variety of emotions and asks the kids to complete a task to help the monster feel better.

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Touch and Learn Emotions is an app that has children pick the picture that matches the given feeling.  The kids will listen for a feeling word and then choose the correct picture from 4 pictures.  I really like that the pictures show real kids faces rather than cartoons.  This helps students learn real facial clues that will help them identify how people in their lives are feeling.

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iTouchiLearn Feelings for Preschool has a lite version that is free, but I would suggest paying for the full version, because it opens up more games and feelings.  This app gives students interactive situations and asks them to identify the correct emotion. They are also able to make different feeling faces with fun food and household items and they have other games such as matching, puzzles, spelling, and more. This app would be perfect for preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade!

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Focus On the Go! is a great app to use in the classroom and would be good to suggest for parents.  They offer a parent resource library that includes printable activities and resources as well as videos that provide skills from the FOCUS Family Resilience Training Program.  I also plan on using this one during individual counseling sessions.  There are games aimed at helping students learn about ways to calm down when they are angry. There is also a comic creator where students can create different scenarios and solutions.

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Finally, there are a couple classroom apps that I plan on using with my ActiveBoard to help enhance my everyday lessons.  Classroom Timer is a free app that is a GREAT visual that can be projected onto your board showing students how long they have left before moving on to a new activity. This would be great for all students, but especially for students who struggle with transitions.

Random Name Selector will randomly display a student name when you ask the class a question.  The app will go through your entire class list before repeating a name ensuring that students are called on a fair number of times.  This will help keep students on their toes because they will never know when they will be called on!

Too Noisy is a cute app that helps control the noise level in your classroom.  When you have this app projected on your board, students can see when they are getting too loud without you having to keep saying, "Be Quiet!" These apps are so simple, yet so helpful!

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I really hope this gives you some useful and creative ways to use iPads in your counseling program.  I can't wait to see my students' reactions when I incorporate these apps this year!! Please leave comments with other apps you use!

Girls Vs Boys 5th Grade Lessons

This year our school only has 2 homerooms of 5th grade students.  This made it very easy for me to split the boys and girls and teach my guidance classes separately, allowing me to teach gender specific lessons.  This proved to be an interesting adventure!

I thought teaching the boys and girls separately would be very effective, because in 5th grade the students seem to need different lessons. For example, bullying looks very different with the girls than it does with the boys.  They are also managing peer pressure differently and dealing with much different problems.  Below are some lessons that I chose to teach with my boys and girls.

Girls:

I used The Weird Series including the books Tough!, Weird!, and Dare! by Erin Frankel.  While I think this series would be helpful for both boys and girls, it was fantastic to read and discuss in an all girls class.  They are very interesting stories that the girls can really relate to.  The hip, cool illustrations really capture their attention.

My  favorite lesson was using the book, Dare, where the students learn about how to handle peer pressure when someone is trying to get them to bully someone and the importance of being a helpful bystander to help the victim when they are getting bullied.  We read and discussed the book using the notes and discussion questions in the back of the book.  Then, I showed the PERFECT video clip showing an example of a group of girls who have to decide whether or not they are going to go along with the crowd to bully someone or stand up to the bully by accepting the person being picked on for who they are.  It is a clip from the Dateline episode: My Kids Wouldn’t Do That: Bullying.  This clip shows how easy it is to join in verbal bullying when others around you are doing it.  I KNOW this is a reality for many 5th graders, and it was an eye opener for many of them.  We were able to discuss how important it is to step in a “squash” the bullying by being nice to the victim and taking up for them.  You definitely need to watch this video clip and share it in your classes!

Boys:

My favorite lesson I did with the boys is my Peer Pressure with Super Bowl Commercial Lesson found here.  They were totally engaged since we were watching funny commercials, and they learned a valuable lesson on how peers will try to get them to do things they know are not right and ways they can refuse the peer pressure.  

Another lesson I did with the boys group that was very successful was on character traits and how students want to present themselves going to the middle school next year to both their peers and teachers to make a good first impression. First, I read the guys an excerpt (pgs. 42-46) from the book A Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger.  This chapter is all about Dwight, and we learn a lot about his different character traits, both good and bad.  Then, I used parts of the lesson plan found here by Lyne Farrell Stover to talk to the boys about what character traits they should be looking for in new friends as they go to the middle school and what traits they should be displaying to others so that they can make positive friendships. Click here for the PDF Lesson Plan. It is a wonderful resource!

Positives of dividing the girls and boys

• Lessons are more specific and relevant to the problems they are facing
• Students are more comfortable sharing and participating
• Students are more honest and open in their discussions

Negatives of dividing the girls and boys

• Behavior is harder to manage with the all boys class
• Scheduling it could be difficult
• Takes more time planning different lessons
  
  

New Approach to Combat Bullying: Love is Louder Always!

This week Randy Cazell,  the author of "Love is Louder Always" came to speak to my 3rd and 4th grade guidance classes.  Randy is a retired Elementary School Counselor and she wrote this book as a tool for teaching about bullying for her guidance classes, and later decieded to publish it.  I fully buy in to her approach for combating bullying.

 She suggests teaching students to treat others with love always.  If you are a bystander to bullying, it is your duty to DO SOMETHING.  You can stand up to the bully or report the behavior to a teacher.  But, most importantly you need to show love to the victim.  We need to teach students to "pull the victim away from the bully," or include the victim in order to get them away from the bully and show them they are cared for.  Kids need to learn to side with the victim vs laughing or supporting the bully EVERY time!  This is the perfect book to read to your students to start spreading the love at your school!

“Scribble Press” Friendship Books

Last year, I posted my Animal Friendship unit, and it was so successful that I used it again this year with my second graders.  For my last lesson in my friendship unit, I decided to integrate technology using our IPads.  I am always looking for ways to enhance my lessons with technology because it helps to capture my students’ interest.  For this lesson, we reviewed characteristics of a good friend, positive qualities to look for when meeting new friends, and our friendship rules of how to treat each other.  

Then, using the “Scribble Press” app on the IPad, each student created and illustrated a friendship book!  Scribble Press is an app that contains numerous templates of books covering a variety of topics.  To get to the one we used, you simply click on “New Book,” “Family,” and then select the book titled “My Best Friend.”  Once you select the book, the app’s pre-scripted text appears with spaces for the student to fill in words to personalize it.  They fill in their best friend’s name, why they are best friends, their favorite things to do together, and their favorite memory together.  I encouraged my students to take this seriously and think about what good qualities make their best friend a good fit for them.  

Once they have filled in the blanks, the app “creates” their book and they are now able to illustrate their entire book with hundreds of different makers, highlighters, text, pictures, stamps, etc.  When the student has finished their story, I have them save it within the app, and I am going to let students share their books during my next guidance class using the same IPadthey created it on.  So far, this is the quickest way I found for saving. However, I may see if I can email them to myself and print them so they can take their story home.  If you have any suggestions for this please comment and let me know!!

Helpful Hints for this lesson:

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1. It takes the students 2 (30-40 minute) classes to finish their books, and a third to share them.  However, I believe the time is worth it, considering they are working hands on and creating the entire time!

2. The books are about a “best friend.”  It is every important to reiterate to the students how important it is for everyone to have more than one best friend and they are supposed to just pick one of their friends to write about.  I explain to students that the purpose of the activity is to review what we have learned about friendship, and we want to be careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings by leaving others out.

3. Our students don’t have a lot of experience using IPads in second grade. It helped a lot for me to have the app pulled up to the screen they needed, before they came to class. 

4. It is important to model to the students how to draw and create the book before they begin because there are many art options to use.  Also, review IPad rules before they begin.

5. Our Ipads are numbered, so it was very important for me to write down the number each student was using so I knew which Ipad to give back to them in order to finish their book.

Peer Pressure Lesson Using Super Bowl Commercials

My classroom guidance lessons are so much more effective when I take the time to create engaging lessons that are meaningful to the grade level I’m teaching.  So, this week with my 5^th graders we talked about peer pressure using the Super Bowl Commercials!  As an added bonus, I introduced the students to the concept of media literacy which is a 5^th grade SOL topic in Virginia this year! 

I started the lesson by reviewing the concept of peer pressure and discussing HOW students pressure you into doing things you may not want to do.  Some responses were: saying you’re a chicken, using humor, pressuring you by asking over and over, telling you that everyone is doing, etc.  Then we talked about how you have to be smarter than the person peer pressuring you and recognize that they are actually using strategies to get you to do something you know is not right. 

Then, I told the students that peer pressure is very similar to what advertising companies do to pressure you into buying certain products.  Big companies use strategies like humor, repetition, telling stories, making you feel like everyone is doing it, and using famous people to pressure you into buying their stuff.  One way you can be smart about peer pressure and watching commercials is to answer questions like, “Who wants you to do it?” “Why are they targeting you?” and “What strategies are they using to pressure you?”

So, then, we watched 5 Super Bowl commercials that I had “pre-screened,” and we discussed each of these questions in relation to each commercial.  The ones we watched were: Tide Joe Montana Stain, Hyundai Team, Oreo Whisper Fight, Got Milk, and VW Get Happy.   They can all be found on this website.  Here is the handout I used.  The handout is only made for 4 commercials  We did the first one as a whole class.  This lesson was a huge success, and it really helped students understand peer pressure from a different perspective.  

Classroom Lesson Organization

I have posted many of the lesson ideas that I use for classroom counseling, so today I thought it would be helpful for me to share my organizational system.  As we all know, organization is a luxury that we are always striving for during the overall craziness of the school environment!  After 4 years of planning and creating classroom lessons, I have found that my life runs so much smoother if I am prepared and organized!  So here is the system that I have put together that works best for me...

First, is my lesson plan bible. I have 40 minute classroom guidance lessons with every classroom every other week.  The schedule can get pretty crazy, so it really helps me to open up my lesson plan book for the week and know what classes I have.  For each class, I jot down the lesson title and anything else I need to change or add to the lesson.

For my lessons, I store them in file folders that are hole punched to fit in binders.  I store all the worksheets/game pieces/books that I need for the lesson in sheet protectors that fit inside the file folders. I also find it really helpful to have the lesson plan written on the inside of the folder.  This helps keep everything I need in one spot. I am not running around at the last minute trying to find the book I need or rushing to make copies.

I store all the lessons I will be using for the 9 weeks in a file folder box that sits on my desk.  Again, this keeps everything close at hand and easy to find!  They are separated by tabs per grade level.

Finally, when the 9 weeks is over, I simply store all my lessons in 3 ring binders labeled by grade level.  This is where they are kept until I need them again next year!  I also think it is important to say that I believe in teaching lessons that directly affect the needs of my students, so I also have a file cabinet full of ideas to pull and use, if my planned lesson is not what they need at the time.  I believe it is important to continuously update my lessons and not grow stagnate by reusing the same ole thing, so these binders are updated constantly. 

How do you organize your classroom lessons?

Fortune Cookie Inspiration

I had a very relaxing snow day today! After many hours of searching Pinterest for creative counseling ideas, I came across this cute idea of making paper fortune cookies for my counseling office.  This is a very simple way to provide uplifting messages to my struggling students.  I personally believe that kids can not hear enough positive affirmations and self esteem boosters.  I plan on keeping this container on my desk and letting students pick out a fortune cookie to take with them after a counseling session.  These are super easy to make.  All you need are cupcake liners, inspirational messages, double sided tape and a container to put them in!