1, 2, 3.....EOG!

*Image from theguardian.com

Today I must take a moment to celebrate the fact that it is my 100th blog post for Life on the Fly! It has been so rewarding to share my journey as a school counselor with others around the world, and I appreciate those that have taken a moment to read a post, make a comment, or contact me behind the scenes. There is no doubt in my mind that this blog has made me a better counselor, especially as it has given me the platform to connect and collaborate with so many other school counselors!

With that being said, I am excited to kick off my Test Success small groups this week. I have been facilitating general homework clubs for the past four to six weeks, depending on the grade level, and am now moving into my structured five-session EOG small groups.  I wrote about my homework clubs in my last post  and was especially excited to try out the app Educreations recently with one of my homework club students......best part, it's free!!! We know when students create something with knowledge they have learned, it gets them into the upper levels of higher order thinking (check out this awesome infographic for Bloom's Revised Taxonomy) and challenges them! One of my fourth graders did a great job of explaining how to convert an improper fraction to a mixed number in the video below,  an often difficult skill for this age group!



I'm sure many of you are also doing Test Success small groups with your "bubble" students or those who need a little extra help with confidence and/or test anxiety.  I have written about my EOG small groups in the past here and have FINALLY put together my Test Success Activity Pack to help you make end of grade test prep as easy as 1, 2, 3....for YOU!  Check out the 15 page PDF at my Life on the Fly TPT store.  Enjoy and Happy Counseling!  ~  Angela

ROCK the EOGs!

Today is officially the one month countdown until my last day of school.  Crazy, exciting, and scary all at the same time! I could say, "where has the year gone?!", but I can just look back through all my posts to see all the work, time, and energy that has gone into my kiddos this year! And, it has been a GREAT year!

Along with the month countdown comes anticipation and stress over the EOGs so I have started my EOG small groups with third and fourth graders (my co-counselor does fifth grade) as well as classroom guidance lessons.  I am especially excited because I get to use an iMovie that my book club made as a technology project once we finished the book, Because of Mr. Terupt (see my post about that here).  Three of the students wanted to make the video to help others learn how to cope with stress once we had discussed their favorite strategies for so many weeks. It is really cute and can be viewed below: (sorry for the videography in some parts....it is a fifth grade production and we are low-budget...ha! :)  )

My lesson with fourth graders focuses primarily on multiple choice strategies and coping with anxiety based on needs assessment feedback from my teachers.  We start out by brainstorming the words they think of when I say we are going to have a lesson about the EOGs (Note:  They are not POSITIVE words 90% of the time in my classrooms).  Then, I give them a pre-survey that determines the students' prior knowledge of multiple choice strategies as well as their confidence in passing the EOGs.  I have them fill out the same survey at the end of the 45 minute lesson to chart growth.  See my two pre and post survey examples below: 

Next, I model EOG strategies with a NC DPI released EOG question and have the kids guess which strategies I am demonstrating. We are using the acronym RUCKUSS to remember the multiple choice strategies of:

                                                               R= Re-read

U= Underline keywords

                                                               C= Circle numbers

                     K= Know what the question is asking

                                                               U= Use time wisely

                              S= Show your work and solve the problem

                              S= Slash the trash (process of elimination)

I also highlight the strategy of drawing a picture even though it isn't part of the acronym since it is so helpful to students who are not as strong with computation.  All of the students get a chance to complete their own math question  using the strategies, and I choose one student to come to the Smartboard and show their strategies to the rest of the class.  

The second goal of the lesson is to focus on test anxiety, and I begin by assessing where the students are on an anxiety scale of 1 to 10.  The students use post-it notes to show where they are on the scale. We emphasize the difference between taking the EOGs seriously and being prepared versus being overly stressed and unable to do your best due to anxiety.  Another benefit of this activity is that it gives me a chance to really see what students I may need to follow up with individually or in informal lunch groups.  

At this point I show the student-made video to the class and we start talking about and practicing deep breaths, set routines, exercises, and positive thoughts.  For the set routines discussion, they get to volunteer to come to the board and decide whether the choice would make them feel "FANTASTIC" or "FRAZZLED".   The students also get to be involved in writing the positive thoughts they would choose for that strategy.  

 It has been a fun lesson, and my post-survey data has been great! I have had about 98% of students increase the number of strategies they know in the classes I have presented to so far.  Most students have already reported that they feel confident about passing the EOGs on the pre-survey, but a handful of students in each class have changed their answers from NO to YES that they have confidence they will pass the EOGs following the lesson so I know it's making a difference!  Feel free to download my EOG Smartboard lesson as a freebie HERE if it will be helpful to you. I would love any comments you have if you download it. THANKS!

                                         Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela

What's on Your Summer Reading List? Book Clubs!

I may be getting ahead of myself, but there are less than 30 days of school left of the 2013-2014 year, and this weekend weather got me thinking about summer vacation.  I love to read and don't get enough time to indulge myself during the school year so I try to catch up during summer vacation. Often, I am researching books that I want to use with parents or students.

I am about to complete my first virtual parent book club and read the book I am using, Talking Back to Facebook, last summer.  The virtual book club, which I organized through Edmodo, has been a really cool experience.  I wanted to focus on Internet safety and online/social media awareness since I am a co-sponsor of the Cleveland Stars Technology Club at my school---check out our student blog here.  I targeted the parents of my tech club members since their children are clearly interested in online projects and technology and also posted the book club opportunity on my webpage.  We are a small group, but it has been perfect for my first endeavor.

Our first group meeting was in person at my school, and I provided refreshments as a fun kick-off event.  I shared the reading schedule with the ladies, although we got off a little bit with snow days here and there, and discussed what they were most interested in learning about.  Each week I post discussion questions related to the assigned chapters and also present a website resource and/or popular app review to the members.  Everyone posts responses to the questions as they are able during the week so we get a variety of perspectives on the challenges, concerns, and successes of navigating the digital world with children.  I should also mention that the author of this book, James P. Steyer, is the founder of Common Sense Media and his website is a GREAT resource for parents and educators alike as it reviews pretty much every media source you would encounter--apps, websites, movies, tv shows, video games, etc.

Also in book news, I recently finished a fantastic book club with some fifth grade students that was designed to help them learn to cope with anxiety. I mentioned in my post here that I have seen more anxiety in my students this year than I ever have before.  Luckily, Because of Mr. Terupt was on my reading list this past summer so I had the perfect book to use in book club with my students.  I have talked a lot about my book clubs on the Book Club Page of my blog so I won't re-hash how I run everything when you can read about it here. There is also a short summary of Mr. Terupt on that page, which I have now updated since reading the book.  I will say that this book club group was one of my most favorite EVER, and my pre/post data was FANTASTIC.  Every child decreased their self-report Likert scale anxiety rating on my post survey compared to the pre-survey, and EVERY teacher reported seeing less anxiety in their students on the teacher post survey.

I changed things up a little this year and let my students take their books home a couple of times after they asked me to do so....they really wanted to see what happened with the characters!  It did help because the book is 268 pages long, although it reads MUCH faster with lots of short chapters.  It is also an awesome book to use when addressing perspective-taking skills because each chapter is written from the viewpoint of a different character, and they are often describing the same event in multiple ways.

I have been asked several times to create book club materials by school counselors who are interested in running book clubs at their school, and I finally made time to put everything together.  The 25-page Because of Mr. Terupt book club activity pack is now available at my Life on the Fly Store.  I will tell you that it is extremely comprehensive and includes everything you would need to create your student workbooks and get started right away:  a parent permission letter, student pre/post surveys, teacher pre/post surveys and all the other student sheets listed in the user's guide below.

I hope it will be helpful to you and  you will love this book as much as I have! If you are more interested in another book that I have mentioned using in book club, send me an email.  The others will be coming as soon as I can carve out some more time.    Also, I really have started making my summer reading list for the summer.  So far, I am interested in the following books (not all are for books clubs as I use different resources for my lessons, Career Cafe events, etc.):

Happy Counseling and Enjoy! ~ Angela