We chose to wear blue and STOMP out bullying on October 5th as part of the national recognition day. Then, we held our spirit week October 12th-16th. Check out our daily themes above and how students participated below!
Those were fun days especially crazy sock day with my Wonder Woman cape socks (yes, you need some!), but the bulk of my emphasis has been on weekly guidance lessons in first, third, and fifth grade classrooms.
I showed my all-time favorite RESPECT RAP on the morning show to students and was able to use it as a jumping off point when I made FRIENDSHIP PIZZAS with my first graders. I have written about this lesson before here and finally put my lesson plan and SMART board notebook file on TPT. Download it NOW because the lesson plan is FREE for the next 48 hours!!!
In third and fifth grades I used the Steps to Respect Curriculum from the Committee for Children (makers of Second Step). I still haven't found anything I like better! I created my own Smartboard lessons teaching the 3 Rs, Recognize, Refuse, and Report. I love incorporating movie clips when we are learning how to RECOGNIZE the bullying definition. This year I used two video clips --the Sneetches and A Christmas Story-- to process the three essential bullying definition questions:
1) Is it one-sided?
2) Does it keep happening?
3) Is it hurting, frightening, threatening, or leaving someone out on purpose?
The Sneetches clip was a new addition, and it worked out really well. I even added the cartoon figures to my bullying prevention bulletin board so students would have a visual reminder of the 3 Rs and the refusing words.
I intentionally left a lot of clear space on this board because 3-5 students have been challenged to integrate what they have learned in the Steps to Respect lessons into original work products like posters, cartoons, poems, songs, raps, or any other creative work. I will post any entries I get and PTO donated "bucket filler" spirit sticks that I can give for participation prizes. Do you know about spirit sticks?! They are ultra popular at my school this year!I brought back my Friendship Pizza bulletin board, too, with a few changes like teacher pics....the kids always get a kick out of them!
Our final week in October will include sharing bullying statistics on the morning show and a scavenger hunt on the playground for "NO BULLYING" cards just to keep bullying prevention on students' minds. What have you been doing this month?! I would love to hear!
Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela
Thank you for the fantastic ideas. I'm very interested in the scavenger hunt at recess. Could you share more about that? Sounds fun!
ReplyDeleteCyndi- I will do a follow up this week and share the pics of my scavenger hunt. I got rained out most of last week but was able to hide my cards a couple of days. Let me know if you have any other questions after I post. Thanks for reading! :)
DeleteHi Angela! I love your blog. I was wondering if you had any tips for current college students that want to become school counselors? Ways to get ahead and any experiences I could add to be better prepared? Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for reading! I didn't decide I wanted to be a school counselor until after college so kudos to you for already knowing you are interested in this career. What I did know in college was that I loved working with children, and I took advantage of lots of volunteer opportunities to do that. I would suggest getting involved with different age groups so you an see what level might interest you most. I would also take some electives in special education if you are able. That was one area that I wish I would have focused on more my during my undergrad/grad years. Good luck and feel free to email me at apoovey@hotmail.com if you have other questions. :)
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