What's Inside Your HeART??

Well, hello again.....I hope these spring months have been good to you and you have been recharged and rejuvenated over spring break. I know the break was a welcome chance to unplug and relax for me!!! I have been committed to prioritizing family & friend time and "ME" time in 2016, and I have really stuck to it!  Remember my New Year's post?! Of course, this commitment means the blog posts have not been plentiful, but when I do write, I hope you will find it useful.

March was a BUSY month for me, and I think that is typical for most school counselors. Students (and staff) are tired and ready for a break, and problem solving skills tend to deteriorate. There was a lot of student conflict, and I found myself using my mediation form and problem solving card OFTEN! I also taught some really fun diversity lessons to my grade levels, which I will share in a future post.  I saw a lot of students individually and got a chance to implement some of the skills I wrote about in my post from the ASCA conference last July.  In particular, I loved using the feeling heart from the Counseling with HeART session by Julie Ford to help students, especially younger ones, process their feelings

I start out by having students draw a heart and choose colors to represent each feeling. Then, they color in sections of the heart to represent how much of each feeling they currently have.  After brainstorming behavior strategies, disputing irrational thoughts, coming up with a solution-focused plan (or whatever theory I am currently using to help!), the student re-colors the heart to show if any feelings have changed.  You can also have the student reflect on the chart from one session to the next if it's a more complicated problem and needs more time to address. In addition to allowing the student to be growth-oriented and giving them a concrete visual that feelings can change and improve, it also provides awesome pre and post data for counselors! Check out some student examples below.

Heart Example #1:  In this example there is no feeling key, but the student colored in the following feelings:  Angry (red), Sad (blue), Happy (Purple), Scared (Green).  After our session, the student colored over half the red and all the green with purple to show increased happiness. We still had work to do on the rest of the anger and sadness, but it was a start!

Heart Example #2:  My second example does include a feelings key, which I really liked creating while the student and I talked about different feelings you can have. This student was feeling very angry when we started the counseling session. After working together, the student colored in about 75% of the heart purple to show we had figured out appropriate ways to get rid of angry feelings and feel more happy.  Again, we still had to work on that last 25%, but we had definite progress.

I liked this art feelings activity so much that I created a template I could pull out of my individual counseling folder anytime it would be useful for a student. I have found that having resource folders for common issues ----conflict, anger, friendship, family, perspective-taking, etc.---- in a hanging wall organizer helps me be ready when students come in with concerns. It also saves me a ton of time because I can quickly find a visual resource to help focus our individual session instead of creating something new each time and spinning my wheels. With so many students and so little time, it has become a great time-saver! 

For this template, you might have a younger student that only lists two or three feelings in the feelings key or an older student who is able to discriminate 4 or 5 feelings with different colors that need to be represented. I included six boxes for different colors, but you can always add more boxes. Hundreds of you got this freebie in its first weeks on TPT, and you can still find it here as part of my DOLLAR DAY items on my Life on the Fly TPT Store! 

Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela

All About Organization

Clutter.  Loose Papers. Trash. Old Snacks. Broken Pencils. Are you having flashbacks of any of the student desks at your school?! I hope the above picture is an extreme example, but organization is an area where many students struggle, especially as they move into the upper elementary grades.  I decided to tackle this important academic habit with my third graders in classroom lessons in January and February.  Depending on the classroom teacher, my third grade students have desks, book boxes, or cubbies they use to keep materials organized; some of the classrooms use tables instead of desks, but they all have some type of organizational system.

My lesson started with students brainstorming all the areas they could organize at school.  After a

sharing discussion, we specifically pinpointed the areas of backpacks, desks, and cubbies, and students rated their current level of organization 1-3 on a pre-test (3 was best). Next, we tacked backpacks and students had to transform my LEVEL 1 backpacks into LEVEL 3 backpacks while also completing a backpack scavenger hunt.  Each team received a scavenger hunt card of 5 items they had to find within the backpack while also organizing it. This activity was a great way to practice teamwork AND organizational skills!  I also used this fun rocket timer found here to jazz up the scavenger hunt a little more.

After students completed the scavenger hunt, we discussed the steps they took to organize the backpacks and students reflected on the changes they needed to make with their own backpacks. Students circled the specific strategies they could use on their pre-survey. Next, we tackled desks or book boxes/cubbies.  Again, students rated themselves on their current level of organization, 1-3. They completed a planning template of whichever area they were organizing, and we highlighted model examples as students completed the templates.

The final step was letting students know that there would be a check-in from the "desk fairy" or "organization fairy" in a few weeks to see if they had implemented any of the organizational strategies.  One important note is that I asked teachers to allow a few minutes during arrival and dismissal time so students could practice what we learned. That practice time is key if we want students to be successful and will affect how these follow up checks go.

So far, I have visited three classrooms and handed out special desk check "congratulation notes."  As always, I can tell some students really took the lesson to heart and are improving while others haven't invested the time to make changes yet.  I will return to the classrooms for a quick post-test (on the back of my pre-test) where they will rate themselves 1-3 again and do some reflection about whether they have followed through on the strategies they circled.  This lesson is really about promoting awareness of organization, its importance, and the specific strategies students can use to not be "that kid with the overflowing desk."

If you are interested in teaching this lesson and want my pre-made lesson plan, pre/post survey, planning templates, congratulations notes, and scavenger hunt cards all in one EASY packet, check it out here at my Life on the Fly TPT store.

Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela

Countdown to #NSCW16

Next week is National School Counseling Week; A week where I hope you will be recognized for the many contributions that you make to your school and students each day.  I hear from many of you that it is hard for you to promote yourself during School Counseling Week, and I get your perspective! I have always found it more fun when I focus on celebrating a school counseling program that is collaborative with parents and teachers and helps promote student success. I also LOVED combining Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Week with School Counseling Week last year (check out my post here) and am going to do it again this year! I decided to take the ASCA theme- "School Counseling: A Recipe for Success" and switch it up to "Kindness: A Recipe for Success" as I celebrate BOTH school counseling AND RAK.  Don't forget that ASCA has a lot of great resources and photo challenges for National School Counseling Week...be sure to get those FB posts and tweets out with the hashtag #NSCW16! Look for mine at @apoovey with the additional hashtag of #groovypoovey.

After brainstorming my Random Acts of Kindness Activity Pack last year, I'm not changing things up too much with my new school and staff...,why reinvent the wheel when it was so much fun?!! My art teachers are helping out again with Kindness-grams, and the Leadership Club that I help sponsor is going to help us sort all 1,000 of them next week so we will be ready for our deliveries next Friday.  They will also make sure we haven't left any staff members out!

I have also been counting down each day on the morning show to give kids ideas of ways they can show kindness next week. My co-counselor and I are sticking with our Kindness Cocoa Bar as a random act of kindness for our staff, but she came up with the brilliant idea to use Keurigs and K-cups of hot chocolate instead of worrying about all those crockpots of hot chocolate to make....#thatwaseasy.  We will expand our toppings bar depending on how creative I get at the grocery store, and I'm sure it will be a welcome treat that staff can stop in and enjoy any time during the day.

I did change my body outlines from last year to hearts this year because it fit better with my "Kindness: A Recipe for Success" theme and the bulletin board I made. Each classroom will decorate their own heart to show examples of kindness through words and actions. I can't wait for those hearts to be overflowing out of my kindness bowl...so cute!  Also, I put up my "tear a compliment" sheet on the bulletin board today just for fun and it's already totally empty before RAK week even starts! Looks like I'll need a few more copies to post around the school. 







Don't forget to check out my TPT if you are looking for some RAK ideas! I have my activity pack on SALE as a little RAK for you over the next couple of days. Check back next week for more photos and NSCW16 shout outs for our profession!

Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela