Third Grade: Being Respectful Learners

For our first unit, we will be focusing on Skills for Learning.  These skills help students to be more successful in the classroom. In this lesson, we focused on the first two Skills for Learning: focusing attention and listening. 

We played a brain builder called Triple T with a Twist. The Triple T stands for Think, Turn, Tell, a way to share ideas with partners where they think of their answers, then turn and tell their partners. The twist in this brain builder is that the other partner must remember what their partner shared and be able to share the answer with the class. This brain builder requires students to listen and focus their attention on their partner so they will remember what they are saying.

Next, we talked about a girl named Sita, who is teaching her classmates how to do a math problem. In the photo, the students are all listening to Sita and being respectful. Students used Think, Turn, Tell to share how they could tell the other students were paying attention. We shared the answers as a group, and then they used Think, Turn, Tell to share what they do that shows that they are listening. 

For the rest of the lesson, students did "Show What You Know," where they form groups with other students and either write a poem, song, skit or story, or draw a picture that represents what they learned in class that day. Students presented their creations to the class.

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grade: Introduction Lessons

I met with third, fourth and fifth grade students last week to talk about my job, why they might want to see me, and what they can do if they need to talk to the counselor. I went over this prezi, which includes The Counselor Game, where students answer questions regarding the counseling program at Chinn. I also reviewed my expectations for the classroom:

First and Second Grade: Introduction Lesson

For first and second grade, I play a game with students called "Who's the School Counselor?"  In this game, I show students different pictures of staff members (such as principal, nurse, etc.) and ask the students if it is their school counselor. For each person, we talk about what their job is. We end the lesson by talking about me, how they can see me, and what I do here at Chinn.

Kindergarten Introduction Lesson

It has been great to meet all of the new kindergarten students this year! Last week I visited the kindergarten classes to deliver a short introductory lesson about school counselors. We read over the poem "Picture of a School Counselor." This poem describes the different body parts that a school counselor has.

• On the go feet
• Open Arms
• Caring Eyes
• Listening Ears
• Warm Heart
• Special Mouth

We also learned different movements that went with each of the body parts and practiced saying the movements with the words as a class.