I'VE MOVED: CHECK OUT MY NEW WEBSITE HERE: https://pawsitiveschoolcounselor.wordpress.com ..read more

I teach over 450 lessons a year. Sometimes I just forget what I've done and sometimes a lesson changes multiple times as the month progresses. In an effort to help me remember what worked, I try and blog about my most successful lessons of the month. Here's some of my favorite from the past month: 3rd: We read Ping and Pong Are Best Friends (mostly) and then discussed feelings of jealousy and what we can do to cope with those feelings using my activity packet online. Next we watched this cute video on conflict resolution. After the video I broke students into teams and they had to create a ..read more

It's NSCW again! I'm a little behind this year due to a illness, snow days, and a never ending to do list. Here's a little sample of how we are celebrating! Sharing - I always put together a newsletter with a little info. about why we celebrate, what school counselors do, and different challenges for the week. Challenges- Each year I challenge my classes to participate not only with the ASCA signs, but also with trivia challenges along with the way. My questions this year were about stars and me, but they can also be about your role. One year I asked students questions that reviewed wh ..read more

Do you use minute meetings? Minute meetings are a quick simple way to meet your students. Ideally, you can use your minute meetings as a quick introduction and to gather data on needs. The goal is to meet with every student (yes I know that's a lot) for 2-4 minutes, learn about them, and take a survey on how you can meet their needs. I say ideally, because even though they are designed to only take a few minutes, it can be challenging to see every student. I really enjoyed the School Counselor Files blog about her experience with minute meetings. Here are some of my ideas on making minute m ..read more

I'm sure most of you have seen When Sophie Get's Angry: Really Really Angry and I was so excited to get When Sophie's Feelings Get Really, Really Hurt two years ago. So imagine how excited I was to see a new Molly Bang book on the Scholastic Preview! This looks like the perfect way to explore mindset and perseverance. Here are some of my ideas for using the book. 1) Do an author study. Read more about Molly here. 2) Combine with a "power of yet" activity and bulletin board, like this FREEBIE from Lone Star Classroom.  3) Partner with your favorite perseverance game like the Target ..read more

In need of some last minute holiday lessons? Here are a few quick ideas: Read:  Activity Idea: Partner with a Santa application (like this the one a co-counselor and friend made).  Or partner with a first resume like this freebie from TPT or this freebie for younger grades or this vocabulary activity. There are lots of options on TPT.  Read or watch: Activity Idea: Partner with this acceptance activity from Counselor Keri. Read:  Activity Idea: Partner with this feeling lesson from Counselor Keri ..read more

Every wonder how I manage to get enough books to give students and staff over 800 books each year? Scholastic Book Club! 1) I asked teachers to volunteer to let me run their book club. Each year I have at least ten teachers willing to do this. Why? It's less work and time for them. It allows me to provide books school wide. They don't have to do anything. 2) Next I created an account and listed all the different grades who I was serving. 3) When flyers come in I separate them into two piles: classrooms I am serving and teachers doing it on their own. I put the flyers for classroom ..read more

OCTOBER IS BULLYING PREVENTION MONTH! Newsletter sent to teachers Here’s the school wide challenge I set up for my teachers: K-1: Being kind is so sweet! Help students differentiate between a "sweet" friend and a "sour" friend with the activity from Counselor Chelsey. Next have students write one they can be be a sweet friend on a watermelon seed. Turn the seeds into your counselor for a “sweet” wall display and win a friendship book for your class library. Also, check out a book from the counselor on being a sweet friend to add to your lesson, morning meeting, or for students ..read more

September is Attendance Awareness Month! It's been a busy month, but here's how we celebrated: 1) School wide challenge: Our PTA theme this year is "sweet." This made me think of pop rocks which lead me to our "attendance rocks challenge." *Each class with get an attendance rocks sign and letters to spell out “rocks.” I used Savvy School Counselor's Attendance Rocks Packet to get us started. I used her cover to make signs for classrooms and then I gave them each cut out letters to spell "rocks."  *If a class had perfect attendance that day they&n ..read more

Have you guys seen Interland by Google yet? I am really digging it for lessons on tech safety.  It's a game that students can play on their computer/iPad and tackles internet safety in a super fun way. The graphics remind me of Minecraft, so instant buy in right there.  Each part of the game map has questions the student must answer to successfully answer to navigate on. The questions vary with vocab words, questions about reliable sources, case scenarios, and even timed questions. The questions are very varied and I would recommend them for grades 4 and up. I will ..read more