Squeal or No Squeal: Update Your Lesson With A Technology Twist

If somehow you have missed this book, run over to Amazon and get it for your counseling library immediately. It's a great book for a lesson on tattle vs. telling, something we all deal with. If you're a middle or high school counselor KEEP reading, this lesson can be done with any age level.


I love this book and I love reading it to my students. At the end of the book we discuss the 3-D rule: squeal when something is dangerous, destructive, or disturbing. Then we practice by playing "Squeal or No Squeal." The students are given several scenarios and they have to decide if they would "squeal" or "not squeal" because it's not a big deal. . I changed this at the high school level to "share" or "not share" and you can use any variation you want. Maybe "text it" or "zip it"- the possibilities are endless. What phrase do you use?

The scenarios can range from "a friend is  reading when they should be doing spelling" to "someone touches you in a bathing suit area and it makes you upset." For older students it could range from "a friend tells you they received a threatening text" to "a classmate offers to sell you pain killers between classes."

I have played several different ways, and each year I think it's gets better and better. My first year the students held up pig signs. On one side the pig said "Squeal" and on the other it said "No Squeal." Although simple, I still have the signs, because you just never know when technology might fail (and it my case that's about once a week.) I would only use this method with the young ones.

Next, I  incorporated the CPS units, or clickers. This is a great student response system that your school may already have- check with your librarian or technology person. Imagine the clickers as remote controls and the students are in charge. Each student gets a clicker with a number and when a question comes up they get to choose their response (A, B, C, T/F, etc) on their remote. Their response is recorded by number at the bottom. It will share the percentage of clickers that answered correctly, but it will not share whom, so anonymity is still intact. The only downfall is sometimes batteries run out or a technology glitch occurs.



This past year I started using Socrative, another student response system that really engages students by  creating online games, tests, quizzes, etc. Socrative runs on tablets, smartphones, and laptops so the possibilities are endless. Since our school recently got a set of iPads and the students just can't get enough I was excited about sing this system. Our older students (4th-6th) also have individual laptops and they always giggle with delight when I enter the room and tell them we are using our computers.  Many of our local county schools are allowing technology into the classroom so this is a great way to jump aboard. I also love this system, because it allows the teacher to log in at the same time as the students and track their progress. This means students can work at their own pace and you can see individual students answers and progress, while maintaining their confidentiality. If a student should answer a question in an alarming way, you can always make an individual follow up appointment with them. 



Socrative is also a good way to gather data by creating a pre and post test. 

Thanks to Pinterest I found a wonderful follow up writing prompt for students at the Teachers Notebook. Guess what Sassy counselors it's FREE!


So there you have it start with a wonderful book, followed by a discussion, test their knowledge with a game, and end with a writing prompt so they can process the information.