Counseling Lessons to Rock Your Second Semester: My 2nd Semester of school counseling lessons and activities. This post explains what I did in my building before, during, and at the end of the second semester. Keep reading to find out more about each of my lessons and activities!

We just went on Summer Break… woooohooo! So, here is your second-semester school counseling lesson post. In this post, I share some of the things I did in my building, during the second half. I implemented new ideas and created new lessons, as well as, pulled out some old favorites and altered some whole-school activities. If you want to check out my 1st Semester Wrap Up… click here.

Coming Back from Christmas Break

Any break is a nice way to work on self-care, spend time with family and recoup yourself for the next couple of months. I love having my breaks, but I am also ready to get back into the swing of things once it’s over. Our district comes back in the middle of the week! We start off with a teacher in-service day, then on a Wednesday or Thursday, kids come back (If you ask me…. this is genius)! When the kids come back, I use those days to do check-ins with my individual students. Then when the next full week arrives, I go back into my counseling lesson rotation.

January Lessons

Habit 4: If you don’t know… our school is implementing the 7 Habits of Happy Kids through the Leader in Me. In January, we talked about Habit 4, Think Win-Win. I usually read from the book 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey to start our lesson. Next, we talked about what it means to think that everyone can win. For my younger students, we focused on understanding how to fill someone else’s bucket, which in return fills your own (you can find that book here). Then, with third and fourth grades, I put students in groups of three and had them read these conflict cards (you can find them in this book) and the students had to decide what a win-win solution would be and share it with the class. This was surprising because some of the solutions were really creative! Also, this was a way for me to collect data on how much they learned from the lesson!

Fairness: This was a huge lesson to be learned! The younger kids especially! I used this time to teach all the students that fair does not mean equal. It means that everyone gets just what they need, even if it looks different. I loved the Fairness PPT from Eve Coates and the File Folder Sort from the Savvy School Counselor! These items were a huge hit in the classroom!

February Lessons

Citizenship: This is a very broad topic that was new for me to teach this year. I know our Computer Lab teacher goes into a lot more detail about digital citizenship in her lessons… so, I felt I didn’t need to spend a ton of time on that. However, being a good citizen, in general, is really important in building good character and I felt our kiddos need to know that. So, we talked about ways they could be a good citizen and discussed ways to help out in the community. To get the conversation going about the initiative, I read one of my favorite books, The Dog Poop Initiative. I explained to them that helping does not need to be a big elaborate thing… the kids started sharing simple and easy ways they could help. I had my third and fourth-grade classes make posters of how they could make a difference in the world. There were a couple of classes that finished earlier and I let them play the digital citizen game from Google called, Google Interland. The kids loved it and it seemed to have great information.

Habit 5: I love teaching this lesson because we get to play our own version of Heads Up! I made these cards with different emotion words (emotion faces for K-1) on them. The students stand in a line facing each other and one student gets a card and holds it to their heads (without looking). The other student starts acting it out, while the one holding the card, guesses the emotion. The students love this game! Then, I read the book Stand in My Shoes by Bob Sornson. Next, we did a listening activity. I gave the students a piece of paper and read them several prompts, where they needed to draw something on their page. In the end, everyone had different versions of what I asked them to do. Showing that all of us understand things a little differently and we should seek to understand one another before asking to be understood.

The leader in Me Symposium

Since we are implementing the Leader in Me in our elementary building, we took three people to the TLIM Symposium in Kansas City! This was my second symposium and I had a blast! My favorite part (besides hanging with my friends) is getting on a bus and going to visit a school for their leadership day! Each time we learned several new things to incorporate into what we already have in place. This is nice because, with TLIM framework, you just tweak things. We are in the position to start our Action Teams in the fall. So… stay tuned for a post on that! You can see if there is a symposium near you… here!

   

March Lessons

Compassion & Kindness: First of all, I usually try and schedule this lesson during the Random Acts of Kindness Week… but this year we were a little late. 🙁 Anyway, most of the kids already have a good grasp on this from the activities and assemblies we do during Random Acts of Kindness Week. During that week, we have a morning announcement every day and lots of fun activities, including a Challenge and Kindness Bingo! You can find my Random Acts of Kindness Week Activities here. Since our lessons came after RAK Week, we decided to have the entire elementary watch the movie Wonder. This was a great way to have discussions about individual differences and being kind.

April Lessons

Understanding Emotions: I started off with another fabulous PowerPoint from Eve Coates called, All About Emotions. Then, I got out my Feeling Bears (no idea where I got these) and had several great discussions about when students feel these and how they feel inside. After we had a good grasp on the different emotions, we read the book My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss and I had the students create their many colored days. They were to draw the different animals and colors they feel. These were super cute posters and the students seemed to really connect because there weren’t very many rules!

Habit 7: For this lesson, it’s all about balance. We talk a lot about how to balance our life. I read from our habits book and have kids talk about things they do to stay balanced. This gets interesting because some kids don’t know about certain activities in the community and this is a time where kids can showcase their extracurricular activities, whether that be a sport, church event, or book club.

Kindergarten Screening (Week off of lessons)

This is a big project in itself! I start about two months prior and make a blank sign-up schedule. I then give this to the secretaries to start collecting appointments. We hang out screening banner in town and start sending out flyers and letters to parents. I make all the incoming Kindergarten students’ permanent folders for the office and start getting their paperwork ready for their screening. During screening week, our preschool teachers take over our Kindergarten classes and the Kindergarten teachers screen incoming students. I explain all the results to parents and make sure their questions are answered. This is actually a really fun week, getting to meet new faces and make sure they are comfortable and ready for their child to start school!

May Lessons

Executive Functions: For third and fourth-grade classes, I spend some time getting them familiar with being organized. We talk a lot about ways to keep your homework organized, take notes, and make lists. These are strategies they can use to be prepared for the next grade, as well as life. In one class, we dedicated time to cleaning and organizing desks and backpacks. I went through like a mother hen and modeled how to set up an organized backpack and planner! These are life skills for fourth graders especially because they leave elementary to go to our fifth-grade building in Middle School. With the younger students, I use this time to talk about transitioning to their next grade-level and what it looks like to be an organized student with new expectations. We do a game of expected vs. unexpected behaviors.

Test Taking Strategies: Gearing up for our state testing! I save this lesson for the week before testing. We go through several strategies that could be helpful. I remind them all of the rules and we discuss tips for taking our state test online. Then we made a cute fold-able with all the tips on it… with a reminder for parents on the back!

End of the Year

The end of the year comes so quick! Once I make it through all my lessons… I usually have a week or two to finalize our counseling department paperwork and do my last check-ins with students. I want to make sure when students leave for the summer, I have checked in with them and everything shifts to a termination activity they can take home.

What kinds of counseling lessons did you do to rock your second semester? It’s always an extremely busy time of year, so for me,  finding the time to do lots of fun things gets challenging. How do you find the time?