Happy August Friends! The smell of school supplies are in the air, and I am definitely feeling the crunch of school starting in seventeen days! I am thoroughly excited to have our PD days next week and get our school year kicked off. I wanted to share what I have been working on in my office during July in between all of the ideas and brainstorming. Our school has the theme "Under the Sea" this year, and I have embraced the nautical theme. Take a peek below at the nautical School Counseling office: This main bulletin board was so much fun to create! I feel the word "character" is so important to be on my main bulletin board in my classroom; it is a daily reminder to students what a school counselor are supposed to help them develop and sustain. On the left, is my door that faces the hallway when open. I found the Cape Cod themed scrapbooking paper pack from Hobby Lobby to make the sign. The Counselor lettering was typed and cut out from the website Canva.com. What is Canva?? It is a great designing website where you can create free graphic designs and printing documents. This will be the second year I have used this, and I feel this has really helped my students and co-workers! I use a clothespin and pin it to the corner of each card depending on where I am or what I am doing that the moment. I used the Cape Cod scrapbooking paper for the top portion, and then I used FREE nautical theme labels from No Longer Drowning on TeachersPayTeachers. Above our my table number centerpieces! I love how they turned out! I used a used candle jar that I removed the wax from, jude rope from Hobby Lobby, and a glue gun. I found a FREE table number printable from Butter Buddies on TeachersPayTeachers, then laminated and glued them to popsicle sticks. These make my classroom management very easy and quick when I am trying to teach a 25 minute lesson! Above is my objective board in the front of my room. I use this and post my objectives weekly for each class I teach. At the beginning of the class, I always reference this with my students and let them know that if they look over here, they will know what we are learning about for the day. Even my first graders got into the habit of looking at this! As hard of a habit it was to get into this, I feel that my objective board keeps me on task and focused when it comes to lesson planning. For the grade numbers, I printed them from Canva, and then glued them onto some of the Cap Cod scrapbooking paper. I also laminated some chart paper; this way I can write the objectives with Expo marker and erase as the year goes! As you can see, I am pumped about this school year. Stay tuned for the fun adventures that are in store!
Jessica
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Happy Friday Everyone! This week has flown by; I have been busy prepping for my school year and getting schedules together for my students. For those of you who are new to school counseling, or maybe just looking for ways to be more efficient, I thought I would share the five forms I use the most to help me run my school counseling program. These are forms that work for me; you don't necessarily need to have them in order to be successful. There are some days at school that get crazy and these help me stay organized at the end of the day. 1. To-Do Lists I know this one may seem like a no-brainer, but seriously I don't know what I would do without it. Every day when I get to school I make my to-do list. Does this mean I accomplish everything on it? Absolutely not! Writing down what I need to do helps me remember to do it. If I do not get to the task by the end of the day, it simply goes at the top of my list for the next day. Do to-do list sound boring? Here are some cute printable I found from Kathie's Cloud I have used in the past. Simply print out and put on a clipboard!! 2. School Counselor Referral Forms Referral forms are half-sheets or quarter-sheets teachers can fill out when a student needs to come see you for an unscheduled visit. These are helpful for me, because they have many uses. It is a tangible note that I can keep on my desk until I get a chance to see the student; or it lets me know I need to talk to a student immediately. Here is mine for this school year: 3. Outside Counselor Contact Information Sheet This sheet is very helpful for me. We are in a rural area with limited resources, so sometimes parents are at a loss when it comes to knowing where to take their children when a mental health issue arises outside of the school's expertise. How do you find these resources? About once a year, I call local mental health professionals in the area and ask them if they are willing to be on out outside counselor referral list. Most agencies are more than willing! I put all of this information in an Excel spreadsheet and and keep them handy so whenever the situation arises, I pull one out and hand it to parents. 4. Individual Counseling Planning Sheet This form changed my individual meetings with my students; it gives your time direction and goals. Plus, it keeps you as a school counselor accountable. We all have those situations: A teacher or administer comes to you and asks you to "work with a student." I now have become better versed in asking questions after this statement is made. Behavioral, family, or academics? How long would you like me to meet with them, etc. When I first started out I did not ask these questions, and it made my individual sessions very tough and ambiguous. Here the sheet I use to track my individual sessions: 5. Time-Task Analysis This form can sometimes get lost in the shuffle of a busy school year, but if positions in your district start to be cut, it can be the most important. Time Task Analysis shows exactly where school counselors allot their time, so it is important to put on paper how you are spending your day. After all, I LOVE to answer the question, "What do you do all day?" by pulling out a sheet that has it documented! This form from Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education can help you document your daily time simply by marking an X in each thirty minute slot. I hope that you find these forms and links helpful! What are some forms you cannot live without during the school year?? I would love to hear your comments below! Have a fabulous weekend! Jessica Nautical Theme Sneak Peek! Good Morning all! I thought I would share with you what I have been working on in my office! I am so excited for this school year; spending time in my office before students and teachers come back truly gears me up and rejuvenates me. The last three years I have focused on the Seven Habits of Happy Kids and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens, all based on Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The habits provide my students with positive vocabulary and wonderful lessons to help them implement the habits in their daily lives. Check out my bulletin board for this year! Our school theme is "Under the Sea", and I am going with a nautical feel for my office. A couple of tricks I use when it comes to bulletin boards:
I hope you are all having fun gearing up for your school year! What has inspired you to get ready for the upcoming year? I would love to hear from you! Happy Hump Day! Jessica Happy Friday All!
Good Morning All! I hope you all are enjoying my curriculum posts; writing these posts somehow ease my anxiety about the upcoming school year. I absolutely love my job; but sometimes with all of the uncertainties that we face in education, planning I have found is the key to my sanity. It is such a great feeling when there is a crazy moment or day right before I have to teach a lesson or class that I can just grab my lesson and go without any panic or fear setting in. It truly makes me feel more calm, which in turn makes my students feel more calm and relaxed. Here is my first grade curriculum map for the upcoming school year. You may notice some similarities with Kindergarten; and that is correct! Kindergarten and first grade overlap a lot in my opinion, so what I do adjust the activity in the lesson to match the Depth of Knowledge. What is a Depth of Knowledge? Great question. I do not have a teaching degree; I earned my Bachelor's degree is Psychology. So when I first joined the world of education and they were talking about the Depth of Knowledge, or DOK, I just smiled and nodded like I knew what they were talking about. However, as I have gained some insight on this topic, it really makes a lot of sense when you are planning your lessons, and gives you an idea on what kind of activities you need to be planning with your classes. Check out this handout, Webb's Depth of Knowledge to give your a little more insight. All of the Missouri GLEs for school counseling have a DOK attached to them, so generally try to match my activity to the DOK. Am I always on point? No, absolutely not. But I am making the effort! 1st Grade School Counseling Curriculum Map I hope you find these curriculum maps helpful!
Happy Planning, Jessica On Friday, it is July 1st. So what does that mean? It means my mind is starting to drift towards school! Whether you are one where this thought brings tears to your eyes or it makes you want to jump for joy, there is always the daunting task of planning your curriculum for the school year. Going into my seventh year of counseling, I feel like I finally have a grasp on things and how I want my year to go. I vividly remember my first few years of counseling when I would aimlessly search for lessons, deciding what to work on and how to organize my school year. It created a lot of anxiety for me, on top of dealing with the daily issues that would pop up for any normal school counselor. On top of the fact that your first year in education is exhausting in general, I felt that I was constantly spinning my wheels at the end of the day trying to think of lessons for the next week (or, let's be honest, the next day). I do not want to take away from the sheer newness of being a counselor; I truly feel that this is where I was made professionally. Learning how to bounce back from some terrible lessons,and the re-focusing so that my students were getting the best from me. But I do wish that someone would have provided me with a guideline, outline, or SOMETHING that would have given me a small hint of direction the summer before I started. The first year I was given tons of resources, but as most school counselors know, building your curriculum is something best done in the summer (at least for me). So, I decided to provide you all with a guideline of what I use when I am planning curriculum. I use the Missouri School Counseling GLEs (which can be accessed HERE), but if you are a school counselor in another state, I suggest checking to make sure your state does not have its own set of GLEs. Missouri's GLEs are very well-written, and are a great starting point if your state does not have their own. Over the next few weeks, I will post some different grade levels curriculum maps. Today I will focus on Kindergarten, since that is the grade I usually start with in the summer. I do this because it helps me remember what students have learned the year before, that way my units can build off each other chronologically. Here is my Kindergarten Curriculum map for the 2016-2017 school year: How do I decide what I need to teach? Here are some tips to help you plan your curriculum the best:
1. Look at your GLEs. Your GLEs are going to help you decide what your students need to learn throughout the year. 2. Conduct Needs Assessments. What is a needs assessment? This is a simple survey that you hand out usually at the end of the year to help you decide what topics other feel students may need to learn. This can be a scary thing to do, but you will be surprised on how much insight you gain. I have done needs assessments with parents, students, and teachers. I keep parent and teacher insight in mind when I am creating my curriculum maps the most. It is best to do this at the end of the school year. 3. Remember to consider yearly events. Pay attention to the school calendar when you are planning your lessons. Red Ribbon Week falls in October, so I always plan my peer pressure unit around that time for middle school. Spring is great for test-taking skills, and diversity units fit in well during November and December when lots of holidays are being celebrated. By no means do you have to plan your lessons during these times, this is just how I have worked it the last few year. 4. Be flexible. Some times there may be lessons you NEED to teach a certain class; that is ok! Just like teachers, we have to teach to our students, not just our curriculum schedule. 5. Network, Network, Network! I would have never found the lessons I have right now without networking with other school counselors. I am the only counselor in my building, and we have 4 total in our district, so I have to reach out to other sources to help me learn new things. And I hope that in five years I am not teaching the same lessons I am now; I am always trying to do better! Have your own ideas for curriculum?? Have questions about my lessons? Please respond below and I will be happy to answer any questions! Summer is a beautiful thing as an educator. We have a truly unique career where we get the chance to rejuvenate and to decompress all things that happened the year before. We also have the freedom to use this time to prepare for another school year.
If there is anyone else like me out there, I cannot count how many times I had come up with a glorious plan to get all this school stuff done in the summer. Only to be let down by my own actions and not do any of it! It was frustrating; I was annoyed by my own letdown of not following through with something I had said I would do. If it were any other person, I would be livid. But yet somehow I still made it through the school year. I still had all my lessons prepared for, I still conducted small groups, and believe it or not students still learned and were successful. Ultimately, I don't think I really ever felt too bad about not accomplishing my summer school plan. After all, whatever I ended up doing in replace of that, was probably what my soul needed at the time. Whether it is binge-watching Netflix, hanging out with friends, spending an hour bumming around the mall, or just simply reading a book, all of those activities would have somehow gotten put off during a regular school year. In the end, I guess I have learned that I cannot feel bad about not doing things for school, because sometimes the soul is more important. If you are one of those ambitious people who can get stuff done in the summer, good for you! I would love to here how you stay motivated to do those things. This summer is a new journey for me as well. I decided I am going to tackle my to-do list before I start my extended contract days in July. Yes, I am actually going to do it! And I know how to hold myself accountable this time! Lists, calendars, and accountability partners are going to keep me motivated. I also have some personal aspects that will keep me motivated as well. It is amazing what you can do when life milestones present themselves. Here is a sneak peek at how I am starting the balance between staying sane and staying motivated: 1. Give yourself two weeks. In the last few years, I have found that two weeks is just the right amount of time for me to get rejuvenated and come back full circle to wanting to busy with school work. Like I said, this is the perfect amount of time for me. Your personal timeline may be different, and that is ok. This year during my two weeks, we went to Florida and moved into our new house. It wasn't two weeks of true vacation, but it was two weeks of me not thinking about school (well, sort of) and just focusing on the part of life that sometimes gets put aside during the school year. By the end of the two weeks, I was scheduled to go to a conference. Honestly, it was tough to get back in that mindset; I was not ready to think about school again. But by the end of the conference, I felt inspired and ready to go home and set some goals. Now, I definitely was not ready for school yet, but I was ready to come home and work independently. 2. Have a calendar. As an educator, I have become addicted to a planner. I admit, I have a true problem; I have to have it. There is something about seeing a blank calendar and filling in events and making to-do lists that just thrills me. And I don't plan on changing any time soon. Summer has always been a tough transition month for planners for me; I like the ones that are built from July to June, that way I do not have to purchase a new planner in the middle of the school year. However, I am very picky about my planners and I have to somehow feel a connection to them (yes, I know it's weird). The planner needs to motivate me in some way when I look at it, otherwise I will not feel compelled to use it. I set aside the month of June to seek out the perfect planner for my upcoming school year, which sometimes leaves me with the month of July without a planner, depending on the one I pick. This pickiness leads me to create a temporary planner for summer. I use one of my old binders, along with some awesome FREE printables, and ta-da! You have a useful, chic planner. Check out one of my previous blogs for a collection of free printables HERE. 3. Set SMART goals. The dreaded smart goals! As an educator, you are probably rolling your eyes at this. You have to deal with smart goals all school year, how dare I bring them up during summer?? Well, there is some validity to them, that is why. This is just a method I like, and it keeps me in check when putting my plans into action. Smart goals keep me from saying, "I am rewriting my whole curriculum this summer," or "I am going to learn everything I can about play therapy,". Instead, I say, " I am going to outline my Kindergarten curriculum over the next ten days." This helps me stay focused and gives me a timeline to hold me accountable. My key to success is keeping it all balanced. And remember, if you do not meet one of your goals, it is OK! Don't beat yourself up about it. Simply accept it, and readjust. Good luck with your summer goals, and keeping the balance! Happy Friday everyone!
How is it already almost mid-June?? Our household has been busy moving and taking a hiatus from the mid-Missouri heat, but now that we are back from the soothing shores of Florida, its time to buckle down and enjoy this wonderful summer ahead! With temperatures reaching the 100s today, I felt my time would be best spent today organizing my summer! I know, it sounds pretty lame, but in true teacher form, I know that planning will help me make the most of the summer. Plus, I have blissfully ignored most of my to-do lists for almost two weeks, and I am feeling refreshed and rejuvenated to get back at it! If you are feeling slightly unmotivated, I thought I would share some of my favorite finds for printables and checklists. Trust me, I have scoured the internet looking for the perfect ones, and I am picky enough that I make some of my own. Check out what has helped me organize my life: 1. Scattered Squirrel This blogger has to be commended for her organized life. She has a printable for just about anything; and in about every cute color imaginable! Checkout some of her sweet designs! My favorite are her weekly and daily planner pages. 2. Eliza Ellis These printables are sweet and chic! They quench my calligraphy crush, and are perfect for anyone wanting their planner to be fashionable. 3. Fab N' Free This blog has all the printables for those not-so-common planning events. From holidays to summer fun for kids, she has quite a collection. My favorite is her recipe binder freebie. Bonus: the blog also features design and clip art freebies. Score! 4. Clean Mamma The name says it all: clean, crisp, and beautiful handouts. She has simplified some of the best printables. Click on the name to check them out! 5.I Heart Organizing Simple and colorful pages make this blog a must-have on your favorites toolbar. I love her family vacation printables! They are perfect for the family roadtrip or weekend out of town. My favorite: The house project budget printable. Clink on the name to see the website! Happy planning friends! Test-taking has been a big theme on here the last few weeks, but I feel that managing skills to make it through a test are crucial for students. The fact is, the tests will be administered no matter what; why not help them do their best?!?
So. alas, why not put their future in the palm of their hands? Or hand, actually. During this lesson I have my students think about a phone app they could invent that could help them do their best on a test. Obviously, there are rules that the app cannot give them the answers, or in any way shape or form help them cheat or take the test for them. If you are looking for how to begin the unit, please check out my other posts about Test-Taking Skills. I used the same power point and skills template, just a different theme. Students will need to select a skill they would like to improve on, and then I let them design the app from there. Depending on how much time you have with your students, you can go as brief or as thorough as you want. I only have about 25 minutes with my students a week, so we make whatever work! When they have chosen the skill, give them a blank piece of paper and have them design the app logo, which will be represented on the "phone screen". The phone screen is really poser paper I have chosen and drawn an image of an iPhone on it. When they have designed their app, have them glue their app onto the phone, and there you have a quick test-taking skills reference right there for them to see! You can hang it in their classroom or in the hallway for all students to use and reflect on before they take a test. Check out the test-taking iPhone my students made! Happy Friday!
The last few weeks have been insanely busy, and with that in a school setting a little unrest tends to follow. I found this quote today from Extramadness and I decided to write it down on a sticky note and place it on my desk for the rest of the school year. As educators, we can sometimes forget how the tone of our voice can affect a student, or even our co-workers. The last few months of school I am going to work my hardest to make sure I really take the time and dig deep for compassion, even when I feel like I may not have any left! |
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