Happy Monday everyone! I hope that you all had a relaxing and egg-filled holiday weekend! Now, it is back to work! I am going to continue sharing another unit for test-taking skills I am going to use with my 5th graders. This unit can be adapted for 4th grade as well! I will also say that I did NOT come up with this idea. The lovely counselor at ElementarySchoolCounselor.org gets full credit for this creative idea. I do want to share some additional items I have created based on certain things I need for curriculum purposes. Lesson 1: What is your Testing Monster?? 1. Begin by reviewing with your students some test-taking strategies. Have them discuss some feelings they may feel before, during, or after a test. 2. Next, review the first half of the powerpoint from ElementaySchoolcounselor.org with them. If you click here, you can download an editable version!
3. Next, have your students complete the Testing Monsters pre-test. They will circle which monster they identify more with, or they can choose that they identify with both of them. Finally, have them write down some test-taking skills they already know about at the bottom of the page. Lesson 2: Conquer Your Test-Taking Monster! 1. Pass your students pre-tests back to them. Tell them this will help them with their note-taking for this unit. 2. Cover the remaining slides on the power point up that was mentioned above until you reach the emotion zones. You can talk about these, but the next lesson is focused heavily on them, so you do not need to go into as much detail . As you do this, have your students take notes on their Monster Note-Taking Worksheet you will provide them. The note-taking worksheet can be downloaded below! The note-taking will take me the remainder of the lesson. Please keep this for your next lessons! For organization purposes, I will have the kids staple it to their pre-test; less papers to shuffle through later! Lesson 3: Channel Your Inner"Boo"! (Emotion Zones) 1. Have the students start by completing a Think-Pair-Share activity to come up with words to describe the character Boo, in the movie. Hopefully students will think of words such as: brave, curious, happy, loving, etc. If you need a clip to show students who have not seen the movie, here is one. 2. Explain the emotion zones to your students. If your students are already familiar with them, then you may move through this part a little quicker. If not, it may take a littler longer, and I would only use the top part of the worksheet for the lesson activity. The objective is to make sure the student understand the different range of emotions you can feel when you take a test, and which ones help you the most when taking a test. 3. Activity: Have students complete the handout below. Lesson 4: What is your Game Plan?? 1. Review with your students the test-taking skills you have covered so far. Now for the favorite part: the post-assessment! Have your students complete the following activity to demonstrate how they are going to conquer their test-taking monster! Happy Test-Taking!!
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Welcome to the last installment of the Recipe for Success Unit! I hope that this lesson will allow you to reflect and see growth in your student's understanding of test-taking skills. This last lesson will allow you to use their worksheet as their post-assessment if needed. Lesson 4: Enter the Pizza Pizzaz Contest! (What Did I Learn?) 1. After students have completed making their pizza, they will complete the Pizza Pizzaz contest page (see below for document). 2. Students will reflect on what ingredients they chose for themselves, and why it was important for them. This will encourage them to use those skills during test-taking time. Please feel free to use any of the documents I created. Good luck with your testing and spring season!
Welcome back for Lessons 2 & 3 of the Test-taking skills unit! I want to start with the fact that Lesson two and three are more work time for the students than anything. I did it this way because I only get 25 minutes a week with my students (yikes!). Lesson 2: Choose your Most-Needed Strategies 1. Review the test-taking strategies from the prior lesson. This should take 5-10 minutes, depending on how long you have for class time. 2. Have your students use their Food Critique sheets from last week's unit for this activity. Instruct student to choose FOUR skills they think are the most important for them to work on. Have them highlight the skills on their sheet. Now, here comes the fun part! Students will begin to assemble their personal pan pizza for test-taking success. Before your lesson, make your you have the following supplies: -Paper plates (cheap ones from Wal-Mart or Dollar Tree. Make sure they are actual paper plates, not Styrofoam). -Plastic baggies (gallon size) -Crayons -Scissors -Pizza Topping handouts (see below) I would use the rest of the lesson to make sure students have the correct supplies that match the skills they are wanting to work on. Have them place their supplies in their baggies and end the lesson for the day. Lesson 3: Make your Personal Pan Pizza Now, making the pizza! 1. Pass supplies back out to students. 2. Students will color their paper plate brown, this is their pizza crust. 3. Next, allow students to cut out their pizza toppings and glue them onto their pizza how they would like. This may take a little time due to supplies and just time purposes. Here is the pizza topping handout. Feel free to use! Also, I provided the power point in a PDF version in case you need that as well!
As spring is springing, we draw near to a time in school that most educators do not look forward to: standardize testing. As counselors, we wear many hats with event. One of the hats I do like to wear is teaching students test-taking skills. No matter what happens in school, our students will always need to know important strategies to help them take tests efficiently and effectively. So, I have come up with a unit that helps students remember and practice this! Unit: A Recipe for Test-Taking Success! Lesson 1: Gather the Ingredients Lesson 2: Choose your Most-Needed Strategies Lesson 3: Make your Personal Pan Pizza Lesson 4: Enter the Pizza Pizzaz Contest (What Did I Learn) Lesson 1: Gather the Ingredients This is the most important lesson, because you are building the dough (groundwork) for your unit. I do this best in a Power Point. With the power point, each student will also have their Critique Card. As you talk about each ingredient, they will rate themselves on how well they do this skill right now. This will also help you collect pre-assessment data. Please feel free to use the power point! The critique card is the last slide on the power point.
I will be adding the personal pan pizza lessons soon! Also stay tuned for the 4th grade Monsters University Test-taking unit! Happy Hump Day! Parent contacts are one of the most important part of any educator's job; however, they tend to get pushed to the way side and unfortunately only happen when necessary. No news is good news, right? Not in this case. Even though we may not get this feeling from parents, they want to hear about all the good things their child is accomplishing in school. When we choose to celebrate the little things for our students, it will make the bigger, less positive behavior easier to communicate with parents. As a counselor, we unfortunately communicate mostly with parents when things aren't going so well for a student. 504s, counseling referrals, and behavior plans all can somehow send an uninviting message to parents: " There is something wrong with my child!!" Even though this is NEVER the message that we want to come across, sometimes that is how it may seem to parents who are doing everything they can for their child. The task for us is to then find a way to communicate with parents in those positive ways, even if they are few and far between. Here are some ways you can communicate and build a positive rapport with parents as a school counselor: 1. Send a Postcard Home No matter how many students you have, make it a habit to send a postcard home every month or week. I have had many administrators say they would like each faculty member to send a certain amount of postcards home a month with a positive message on it about a student. New or veteran counselor, this is a great way for students to get their positive message at home WITH their parents. 2. Attend school functions Whether it is a family night, band concert, school carnival, you need to GO TO THEM! Now, I am not saying you have to attend every single event, but make a goal to attend two or three a year. If you make yourself a visible presence in the community, that will help parents relate to you when you are in those tough meetings. Also, it gives you a chance to see your students in a positive light so you can connect with them the next day at school. Nothing will make a student feel more special than telling them you saw them score the winning point or rocked their performance on the saxophone. 3. Parent Newsletters Think those pesky newsletters are only for classroom teachers? Think again. My first year as a school counselor my administrator set the expectation for me that I would send home a monthly newsletter. After I grumbled a little bit about this, I decided to embrace it. And six years later, I really love doing it. Here are some of the topics I include: a short summary of my monthly lessons, small groups I offer, a topic that parents may want to learn more about, and a few others if I feel like it. Click on the link below to see one of my newsletters. Short on time? Check out Smore.com to help you build a quick and easy newsletter. You can send it out via email, or have a link posted onto the school website. It is FREE and super easy to use. 4. Positive Phone Calls As a counselor, it may feel a little weird just to pick up the phone and call a parent and make a positive phone call, especially if you do not see a student on a daily basis. No matter what, it is a habit you need to get into doing! One way you can do this is by talking to your teacher daily to see what kind of day a student has had in the classroom. If you have a student in a small group for respect, ask their teacher if they did a good job being respectful today or if they make an act of kindness to another student. This information will help with making the phone call. 5. Hold Parent Events This may sound scary, but it can totally be a hit! This year our district started by hosting "Coffee with the Counselor." This goes perfect for me, because I love coffee, and my student associate me with my trusty coffee cup every morning :). What we did is pick a topic that we wanted parents to be informed on, find tangible handouts they could use, and then provide food and coffee. Sounds simple right? It was! Now, I found that morning was not a great time for my parents in my building, so I changed it up second semester and hosted a "Cookies with the Counselor" during parent-teacher conferences in the spring semester. But don't limit yourself it these, get creative! Remember, any positive parent contact is a win! Always remember that working with the parent will help ensure the success of our students. And that really what we are all working towards, right? Good luck! Please comment below if you have any questions! Parent Newsletter Example Happy Monday! Even though today is a PD day, I am sitting here reflecting about some issues that have come up in the last few weeks, and the reoccurring theme is tattling. Now, tattling never really goes away in an elementary school, but I do feel there are some peak times where the behavior occurs throughout a school year. This would be one of those times. We are two weeks out from spring break and the kids are itching with excitement with the warm weather that is coming about. When one of these times occur, I naturally turn to one of my favorite books, The Bad Case of the Tattle Tongue by Julia Cook. I am in LOVE with this book, and I have used it for the last six years. It was one of the first books I purchased as a school counselor, and I am already needing a new copy. My students ask to hear it, and even my 5th graders aren't sick of it after all of this time. Julia also has written a great activity book to go along with it. I personally do not have it, but I know people who have it and love it. If you look on Pinterest or TeachersPayTeachers, they have lots of free activities as well. Below is a activity page I have used with 4th and 5th graders who may have some problems really grasping the concept of tattling. The sheet allows for them to write down the situation and to be heard, but also allow them to think about the steps they should take before they involve an adult in the problem. Feel free to use! |
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