School Counselor Blog

A reader asked me if I could recommend some places to find and purchase counseling resources. Q: "I am going to order [one of the books] you suggested Seeing Red: An Anger Management and Peacemaking Curriculum .   Sounds like Marco Products is a great place to buy supplies - or is there another place you'd suggest? " A: I would recommend Amazon for purchasing resources. I have an Amazon store of books I recommend . You can  visit it at: http://astore.amazon.com/school014-20 . I have found that Amazon tends to be cheaper than a lot of other retailers for counseling resources .  Amazon has free shipping on most orders of $25 or more. Another place to purchase great books and resources is Free Spirit Publishing . I have always been very pleased with the resources from Free Spirit Publishing .  Free Spirit Publishing has free material downloads from time to time, such as book chapters or facilitator guides. Check out my blog entry about one of my FAVORITE books I

I was looking for ideas for a lesson on RESPECT for 7th grade. I just came across some cool ideas on the National Education Association (NEA)  website. NEA featured  RESPECT lessons  from Education World .   Check them out! Where do you find respect lessons? 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 resources.  Contact Danielle via  email , follow her on  twitter , and become a fan of the  School Counselor Blog Facebook Page .

I have another snow day today! I am working on my counseling website for school. I was trying to find some free clip art that I could use on my website. I love the free clip art from FableVision ! You can use free clip art from FableVision on your website if you display the copyright information. Today, when I was searching for free clip art, I found Discovery Education's clip art gallery .  Discovery Education has free clip art that you can use for educational purposes. Discovery Education has a wide range of clip art including specific subjects, weather, students, teachers, and animations. Make sure you read the terms of use and display the copyright information when you use it. Where do you find free clip art? 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 innovat

This week my fourth grade anger management group for boys had its fourth session using Seeing Red: An Anger Management and Peacemaking Curriculum for Kids . I restarted the group because I shuffled around some students. One student I am now meeting with individually and another student joined the group. My group consists of four fourth grade boys. I only have the students for a half an hour. The lessons are created to last 45 minutes, but since I only have four students, we usually get through everything. I really enjoy Seeing Red: An Anger Management and Peacemaking Curriculum for Kids. It is a great guide. It is very interactive and has really fun activities. The students really enjoy the activities that we do. This week's topic was great. It was called "Warning: I'm Getting Mad!" This lesson seemed to be extremely relevant for the students. The activities I facilitated from Seeing Red: An Anger Management and Peacemaking Curriculum for Kids this week inc

Our school is having a door decorating contest in honor of Black History Month.  I am excited to participate! I think the contest is a great idea to raise awareness and to build excitement about Black History Month.  I was throwing around a couple different ideas for my door decoration, but I then had an "ah-ha" moment. I happened to glance at my shelf and The Secret Olivia Told Me , a book about rumors, inspired me.   The Secret Olivia Told Me  received a Coretta Scott King Book Award  in 2008 for the amazing illustrations by Nancy Devard.  The Coretta Scott King Book Award is given to works that promote and honor the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., including messages of peace, nonviolent social change, and brotherhood. One of the art teachers at my school helped me make my door decoration by drawing me the silhouette featured on the front of  The Secret Olivia Told Me . I covered the door in white roll paper. I then cut construction paper into fourths to ma

I received  The Bully-Free Classroom  book around the holiday break. It is such a great resource! It has everything you could imagine in it about bullying and how to combat bullying your school. There are helpful lists and activities. The best part about the current edition of  The Bully-Free Classroom  is that a CD-ROM comes with it! It has reproducible handouts, activities, customizable awards and certificates. The  The Bully-Free Classroom CD-ROM makes using the materials from the book so convenient! It is so much easier to use the  The Bully-Free Classroom  book CD-ROM and print than to use the book to make copies.  The Bully-Free Classroom  book has materials that are great to use as a supplement to or in conjunction with my "Peacemakers" lessons. I also got the book Bully-Free Bulletin Boards, Posters, and Banners . It has great ideas and images of bulletin boards.  Bully-Free Bulletin Boards, Posters, and Banners  even includes templates that you can use.  It real

This is a continuation of the post I wrote on Monday about how I spent my time this week . I decided to write about this because of I got a request from one of my district's curriculum coordinators asking me to document my time so that she can advocate for more counselors. So, this is how I spent my day on Tuesday: I went to day-long training on  Response to Instruction and Intervention  (RtII).  It was a very informative training. I learned a lot about RtII.  To learn more about RtII you can visit the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Networks site. While at the training, I realized how much our school could benefit from a Positive School Wide Behavior Support Plan . I would love to focus more on positive behavior at my school. I think focusing on positive behavior would help students who are displaying positive behavior to be reinforced. I think a lot of the time students who are displaying negative behavior get reinforced and get attention. Any attention,

I informed all of the fifth grade teachers that I would like to facilitate guidance lessons in their classrooms. I asked the teachers what their main concerns or problems were so that I could facilitate a lesson based on their needs. The first request I received was for a lesson on responsibility and good character. I utilized the responsibility lesson  I found on the Character Counts website.   Character Counts has lots of free lessons and activities for download. Although the lesson says that it is for students ages six to nine, I tailored the lesson for the fifth graders I was working with.  The lesson includes words and definitions. I printed the words in orange and the definitions in white. I cut out the words and definitions so that the students could choose them out of a cloth bucket. Once each student picked a word or definition out of the bucket, I instructed the students to read their word or definition. When they finished reading, I instructed them to find their

Wow. That is all I can say. I cannot believe it is February already. What happened to January?!?! Where does the time go? I guess that is the million dollar question. I have been SOOO busy lately. I am sure most other school counselors out there can agree that we are in the busiest time of the year. And oh, yeah, it's state testing crunch time! So needless to say I have not been blogging lately, but I am trying to get back into the swing of things. Which brings me to the email I got today... I got an email from one of our district curriculum coordinators today asking me to document how I spent my time for a few days. She is working on a grant and will use the data to advocate for more counseling positions. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends one counselor to every 250 students. I am currently serving about 400 students in fourth through eighth grade. I was more than happy to document my time! Anything to get more counselors! I am going to do it every