This post contains affiliate links I put a lot of thought into the questions I ask students while I’m reading aloud to them. Some counselors may be able to remember which page to ask which questions on, or be able to come up with amazing ones on the spot, but I’m just not there […]
Jobs on Wheels
The truth is that career-focused lessons get short shrift in our program. In a school where instructional time always feels limited, the schedule is crazy, and we are in dire need of raising test scores, teachers are invested in our lessons a gazillion times more when they can see a direct connection between our lessons […]
Must Haves – Books – The Julia Cook Edition
This post contains affiliate links. This is Part 2 in my must have book series. You can read Part 1 here! Part 2: The Julia Cook Collection Look, I’m a school counselor so of course I love Julia Cook. That said, not every one of her books has been a hit for me (in fact […]
Conflict Escalator Lesson
While reading through the comments on this blog post, I discovered the book Teaching Conflict Resolution Through Children’s Literature (Grades K-2) and the idea of the “conflict escalator”. Especially when conflict was a bigger problem at our school, it seemed like our students were constantly escalating their problems unknowingly! This seemed like a great lesson […]
I Caved – My TpT Store
I make most of my lesson plans and the associated materials myself. A couple of colleagues have encouraged me in the past to list them on TpT….and I was incredibly resistant. I felt so grateful to the bloggers that shared their materials freely with the world (and me!) that I felt a little indebted to […]
Best Effort Lesson
Every year, my third grade teachers request that I do an effort on “Best Effort”. I think some of it is the teachers and their expectations and I think another part is the huge jump between 2nd and 3rd grade in regards to rigor. Last year (2019), this was the first request of my 4th […]
THINK Before You Speak Lesson
The theme for most of the year in 4th grade’s Life Skills lessons is positive communication. We’ll tie many of our lessons back to the idea “think before you speak”. A couple weeks before I started the lessons, I crafted what I thought what an awesome lesson. I was pretty proud of myself. Did I […]
Upstander Lesson
This post contains affiliate links Continuing 3rd grade’s conflict resolution unit, we did a lesson on being an upstander. I tried to underscore, as much as possible, that being an upstander is not limited to bullying conflicts, that we should be upstanders whenever we see mean moments as well. This is the perfect follow-up to […]
Body Language and Tone of Voice Lesson Plan
Another new 4th grade lesson, another set of challenges and reiterations until I got it just right. Our August B lesson in 4th grade continued our positive communication unit with a focus on body language and tone of voice. We started off with reviewing the questions we need to ask ourselves when we THINK before […]
