School Counselor Blog

I facilitated a lesson about cooperation to kindergarten students. We talked about bees and how bees cooperate with each other. We also discussed what kindergarten students could do to cooperate and work together. The students create bees to reinforce the message of cooperation. I created a template for a body and wings. The students had to share the templates. They had to trace the templates and cut out the bee pattern. Afterward, they decorated their bees with crayon and glued their bee parts on. The bees serve as a visual reminder of cooperation for kindergarten students. What creative lessons do you facilitate about cooperation? Comment below,  email me ,  tweet , or share on the  School Counselor Blog Facebook Page ! Danielle is a K-12 Certified School Counselor, Nationally Certified Counselor, and blogger at  School Counselor Blog , a place where school counselors share innovative ideas,  creative lesson plans,  and quality resourc...

I facilitated a lesson with 4th graders that involved spaghetti, marshmallows, and cooperation! I divided the class into groups of three or four students. Each group received dry spaghetti noodles and a bowl of marshmallows. I instructed students that they would be making a tower with their group members. I told them that the group who had the highest tower at the end of ten minutes would get a prize from me. After the 10 minutes were up, I asked groups what they thought the point of the activity was. Students suggested that the activity was about "working together." I asked students what was difficult for them during this activity. They commented that it was difficult to work with others, it was frustrating when the spaghetti broke, and that it was hard to figure out how to make the towers stand with all of their group members helping at the same time. I asked the students what they had to do during this activity to work together. They commented that they had t...

We are implementing a positive school wide behavior program that focuses on the three "B's": Be Safe, Be Responsible, and Be Respectful. We have been using "bees" to represent the three "B's" because of the play on words. I am currently teaching lessons about cooperation in grades K-4. I wanted to do a lesson that would involve art and teach first graders about cooperation. One of the art teachers gave me an idea of using finger print art . The students used a yellow marker to color their finger and then used their finger like a stamp to make bee bodies. The students did a great job. We talked about how bees cooperate with each other to make honey. I asked the students how first graders show cooperation. Some comments were: we share, we help each other, we ask each other for things, and we work together. Below are two finished pictures. What lessons do you use to teach students about cooperation? Comment...

These pictures are from a classroom guidance lesson I did on cooperation with all of the first grade classes. First, I had the students help me draw a picture using only one color. Then, I asked them what we could do to make the picture better. Eventually, students stated that we needed to have more color. We talked about how boring the world would be if it was only one color. We read The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf . The book explains that everyone needs to work together in order to create a beautiful picture. We talked about "okay" and "not okay" behaviors that the crayons were doing. In order for the picture to be complete in the The Crayon Box that Talked , the crayons had to work together and use all of their colors. I divided the students into groups of four and asked them to draw a picture as a group. I gave them all a large sheet of paper, markers, and crayons to use. They had to make decisions about which side was the top of the picture...