5th Grade

Lesson 3: Goal setting

September 9th, 2022

This week in 5th grade we talked about the importance of goal setting!

Last year, student's learned how to set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-Oriented

Every goal needs to have all 5 of these elements in order for students to be successful.

This year, we worked on long-term vs short-term goals. We reviewed a powerpoint explaining the difference. Long-term goals are something we want to achieve over a longer period of time. Short-term goals are smaller goals we put in place to help us achieve the long-term goal. For example:

Long-term goal: I will reach 80% profieciency in reading by May 2023.

Short-term goal: I will practice reading at home 30 minutes a day for the month of September.

Students then got to set their own goals. These could've been personal, academic, or social emotional goals. They got to share these goals with a partner and add them to their leadership binder. We will review their goals in the spring.

I struggle to remember to take photos in this class! Hoping to remember this coming week!


Lesson 1: meet the counselor

August 26, 2022

I love to start every year off with a refresher about my role here as the School Counselor at Andrew. We started our lesson off with our 3 mindful breaths. We use a Hoberman Sphere and practice taking 3 breaths in through our nose and out through our mouths. This is a great transition piece to get student's ready to refocus and calm their bodies before the start of every lesson.

First, we did a fun ice breaker. I used a beach ball and wrote a bunch of get to know you questions on it. For example:

  1. What's your favorite ice cream?

  2. If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go?

  3. What's your favorite subject in school?

Students passed around the beach ball and wherever their hand landed they had to answer the question underneath. I always enjoy starting my first lesson with a interactive game! Students have a blast as well.

Next, we talked about how the counselor can be useful to them in their learning. We discussed what our weekly guidance lessons will look like, how they can come and see me for an individual session if they or their teacher have some concerns, as well as the student group work I start mid-year. We talked about my confidentiality rules. As the counselor I have a specific code of ethics I abide by when working with students. All conversations stay confidential except for these four exceptions:

  1. Someone is hurting you

  2. You want to hurt yourself

  3. You want to hurt someone else

  4. You give me permission to share with another adult

We break this down for them to better understand, I explain that my job is to keep them safe and these rules help me do that!

Lastly, students filled out a questionaire for me to better get to know them and help me best understand if any students need to be added to my individual roster.

It was so great getting back into the classroom with our 5th graders! I forgot to get pictures this lesson, hopefully I can remember for next week!