Favorite Lessons of the Month

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 as many conflict resolution strategies as they could. We ended our lesson with some words of wisdom from Kid President.

4th Grade: We talked about perseverance and growth mindest.

First we read one of these awesome books:

As we were reading or during reading students wrote down examples of a negative or fixed mindset. You can use blank post it notes or Counselor Keri has an awesome resource for this lesson.

Next we watched some great videos on Class Dojo. 

After watching the videos I put students into groups and each group had to change at least 4 fixed mindset statements into positive mindset statements. I made it a relay race and as teams finished they either got supplies for the Marshmallow Challenge or the paper for the Class Dojo challenge. 

5th- We are doing to Weird! Series. Check out all the details here.

Saving Sam!

I have an amazing intern this semester! She's really become my right hand man and is a natural for elementary. So it's no surprise that she just created a winning lesson for 3rd grade. We have been talking all year about perseverance, mindset, and goal setting. So this was a perfect lesson to review and refresh on all three topics. 
Here it is:

First, she created an awesome Power Point. It introduces perseverance with a great Bruno Mars video, that even our 3rd graders asked to watch again.

It also highlighted some famous "failures." 

Here are her talking tips: Helpful Tips for PowerPoint…. Who are those people?

Walt Disney: The man who gave us Disney World and Mickey Mouse. His first animation company went bankrupt. He was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination. Legend has it he was turned down 302 times before he got the money to create Disney World

J.K Rowling The author of the Harry Potter series didn’t magically become wealthier than the Queen of England. Coming from poverty, she wrote the first book in the series on an old typewriter only to be turned down by more than ten publishers. A year later, a publisher named Barry Cunningham agreed to publish her book, but suggested she get another job because children’s books do not typically lead to making a lot of money.

Next we challenged them to play "Saving Sam".

A Peak At Nov's Lessons

Here's what I am doing in Nov. What are you doing?

K- Problem and Solving

We did this FREEBIE color sheet of different situations together to discuss tattle vs. telling. Heads up this is a tough sheet for them so we went slowly. You could also do a big/small problem sort.

Next, we discussed how we can solve small problems by watching Kelso.  I also found this great Big Deal/Little Deal Prezi online.
After that we went back to our color sheet and spun a Kelso wheel I created online to figure out solutions would work. We acted out our problems and solutions. If time allowed we colored our own solution wheels.

I'm clearly no artist. 

In first grade, we are talking about anger management.
First, we read Grumpy Gloria. After reading, we folded long construction paper over to make a book. On the first page we did a "Grumpy Me" cover.

Then on the first page we drew something that makes you grumpy.  

After that we read How To Dinosaur's Say I'm Mad and practiced the two strategies in the book. First we counted to 10 and then we did Belly Breathing on GoNoodle.
After that we added another page to our book by drawing us belly breathing and the back cover was us happy.


3rd Grade- We are talking about coping skills.
First, we read and discussed Silly Billy.  Before reading we made predictions and observations about the book and then checked in as we read to see if they were coming true. We took a brain break to practice our own ways of relaxing by doing Chillax on GoNoodle.
Then we made guesses as to what coping skills were and then I introduce coping skill's using Counselor Keri's Interactive Notebook. Next, we identified the coping skills seen in the story and then used the notebook to pick out and color 4 of our own coping skills.  45 minutes flew by!

5th Grade- We are problem solvers.
First we read and discussed one of my new favorite books What Do You Do With A Problem?  After reading we discussed ways we could solve your own problem using a problem solving tip chart I created with our school mascot. We also discussed what a silver lining is.

Afterwards I gave each student a small sheet of paper and asked them to write down or a real problem they had had this year at school. If they couldn't think of one they could make one up. I gave them a heads up that someone else was reading it, so if it was too personal they could write that down and give it to me and make up another problem. After they were written we threw all our problems into a snowball and everyone grabbed a new paper. Next, they had to find the silver lining in that problem and then if possible come up with one solution.
You can also use this silver lining FREEBIE.

Here is a great silver lining activity to go along with the lesson. I also highly recommend the book It's Tough To Lose Your Balloon.
Also, here is a "silver lining" idiom study.

September Lesson Plans

Finally getting around to sharing what I've been up to. What a school year!!

Here's what we are doing in our class in September. I'll upload my lesson plans to Google Drive and keep updating them there so check it out here.

gonoodle.com

K and 1st: Let's Listen

We started by reading Interrupting Chicken.  Then we practiced our skills by learning the chicken dance on Go Noodle.

gonoodle.com

Then we talked about all the body parts it takes to listen (eyes, ears, body, brain, etc).  We then met Howard B Wigglebottom who is also learning how to listen. After watching our story,
we practiced again by playing Freeze It on Go Noodle.

http://speech-specialed.blogspot.com/p/whole-body-listening.html

Follow up: We did a cut and paste activity about whole body listening.

Time for you to go book shopping!

Yesterday was a super fun night of getting my counselor nerd on. The amazing author/illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka did a book reading, illustration drawing, and book signing in town. 

Some people swoon when they see a movie star and apparently I have the teacher version of that because I was a red, nervous wreck. 

Some of you might know Jarrett (yes yes I am pretending we are close friends now just like I did with Michelle) from his Lunch Lady series.  It's a great graphic novel about a Lunch Lady who happens to also be a super hero (aren't they really in real life too!) This is a book series that even your most stubborn readers will love. If you are looking for an amazing service learning project to go with the books  look no further- check out how my BIONIC teamed up to help our school librarian create an amazing luncheon for our staff. Need more inspiration check out this guide for using graphic novels in the classroom. 

So Jarrett just wrote and published a new picture book that is perfect for every school counselor. "It's Tough To Loose Your Balloon" is a wonderful way to talk to your students about feelings, cause and effect, positive attitudes, and mindset.  Check out the book trailer below.

I struggle with....

spelling, grammar, organization, ADHD, being a crazy dog mom, but I won't let that stop me from being awesome.

Here's a lesson I just stole from the remarkable Elizabeth Shepherd. It's a ton of fun for 5th and 6th graders. Some of you may feel comfortable doing it with 4th as well.

Do your kids love Jarrett Krosoczka as much as us? He's written so many amazing books, including the lunch lady series. He's an amazing author, school supporter, and all around an amazing and inspiring man.

Here's our simple yet powerful lesson:

1) We watched his Ted Talks about becoming an author. It's really funny and engaging. Heads up he does talk about his mothers addiction to drugs, his absent father, and his grandparents love of cocktails. Oh and he says "hell" once. My older kids could handle it, in fact many of them I think really connected because their own homes are just as chaotic.

2) We discussed how each of us face challenges but to be successful we need to be resilient. We talked about perseverance, resiliency and hope. Then I asked them to take a personal self reflection moment. During this time they completed the sentence: "I struggle with_______, but I won't let that stop me from_________." It was awesome to see some of their answers.

"I struggle with my parents divorce, but I won't let that stop me from getting off task or being irresponsible."

What do you struggle with? What will you not let that stop you from doing?