We’ve tried using hard copy and google forms for this and there are pros and cons with each!
3. Grade Level Themes and Units
Do students learn multiplication in one lesson? Nope. Do they learn all their letter sounds in one lesson? Nope. They won’t learn how to be responsible after one lesson either, or how to be great conflict solvers, or how to regulate strong feelings. Instead of monthly themes, we decided that each grade would focus on a theme throughout the year and all their lessons (outside of the must-dos) would be aligned to this theme. At the time, we were only getting into the classrooms 10 times/year. Now that our caseloads have shrunk and we’re doing 18-20 lessons each year, we’ve moved from yearly themes to quarterly units; first quarter is the ‘must dos’ and the remaining three quarters each cover a 4-5 lesson unit. I have our first curriculum map (for free).
And here’s the thing about doing themes/units; it’s a much more evidence-based model! Take a look at the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning’s “SELect Programs” and you’ll find several that use themed units (4Rs, PATHS, Second Step, MindUP, The Incredible Years, Peace Works, and Positive Action to name a few).
We’re still working on 1st and 2nd grade for second semester (their needs assessments were definitely not clear cut!), but this is how 3rd and 4th shaped up for this school year:
Looking for some other possible themes that may be a fit for your students?

I hope this post was helpful for you! Want to talk more about school counseling core curriculum? Do you want to do a fun, simple, and powerful training to help you with curriculum mapping, lesson planning, and delivering impactful SEL lessons?
Check out:

Click here or the image above to learn more about the training!
To pin for later:Part 2 in this series: School Counseling Needs Assessment
This is such a great post! Thanks so much for sharing 🙂 I am entering my first year as a school counselor and this helps me a lot with focusing my lessons while making them effective. It makes sense to curriculum map because that's how teachers plan their lessons! I have a question regarding specifically requested lessons – how do you decide to get back on track as far as the planned lessons go?
Thanks again!
I usually do those in addition to what is regularly scheduled – often times as a "mini-lesson" that I popped in to do during their morning meetings. There were also some occasions where I would swap out the scheduled lesson for what was requested depending on need. I hope that helps!
This was great thank you!!!
Thank you for the free resource. I find it so helpful. I am in my 9th year as a school counselor, and I too once taught to monthly character traits, and have found it so much more useful for my students and school environment to be teaching themes to students based on their grade-level!
This is such great information! 🙂 Thanks for making it available to others.
Do you share this curriculum map with stakeholders (like teachers, on your website for parents, etc.)?
Sometimes! We usually share the draft curriculum map with teachers at the start of the year, but we don’t necessarily share it again as we update it based on data (they don’t care and would prefer not to receive more paperwork or emails!). For parents, we include it our first “coffee with the counselors” event (pre-pandemic). It was also included in our advisory council meetings. Many of our families did not have regular access to the internet outside of their phones and school websites aren’t super mobile friendly, so we did not include it there. I also think parents/caregivers might have a harder time understanding why/how a curriculum map might/should change throughout the year, but also wouldn’t necessarily want to see the updated one each newsletter. Instead, we focused on sending home notes after specific lessons that were important for them to reinforce at home.
Best,
Sara