Hello 4th grade parents! I am so excited you are here! Please use this site as a resource to know what topics your child will be learning about throughout the year. Guidance is a special for 45 minutes every other week. We cover many topics throughout the year however, the topics always fall within academic, social/emotional, or career education. Your child would love to have conversations with you about many of these topics. To make this easier, I will always try to provide "extension questions" for each lesson to help facilitate meaningful conversations at home.
Our School Counseling program is both preventative and responsive. If you need to consult with me about any concerns you may have surrounding your child's school or home life, please feel free to contact me via email Tana.Amodeo@lcps.org.
In our first guidance lesson of the year, we reviewed the role of the school counselor. We selected possible topics for guidance this year, reviewed reasons to see your school counselor, and how to complete a self-referral to the school counselor. We enjoyed sharing in our first circle of the year!
At-Home Extension Questions:
Handouts: Meet The School Counselor, Family Engagement Letter
In our second lesson of September, we learned about responsibility. Not just want it means to be responsible, but rather to take responsibility for our choices and mistakes. We discussed blaming others vs. taking responsibility and reflected on some of our personal experiences. We read "But It's Not My Fault!" and practiced changing blaming statements into responsibility statements.
At-Home Extension Questions:
We kicked off bullying prevention month by reviewing conflict vs. bullying, the four types of bullying (physical, verbal, emotional & cyber), and what to do if you find yourself in a bullying situation (Stop, Walk, Talk).
At-Home Extension Questions:
We concluded bullying prevention month by reviewing what to if you see someone else being bullied. A bystander sees bullying and doesn't know what to do. An *upstander* sees bullying and chooses any of the 4 upstanding options to help: Be a buddy, interrupt, speak out, or tell someone! We watched the NED Show's Upstander video, linked above. We also read "The Juice Box Bully" and discussed what might lead a student to bully. We learned how a classroom can to work together to bring a stop to poor choices.
At-Home Extension Questions:
In our first guidance lesson this month, we learned about diversity, or differences...which are a good thing! Differences make the world an exciting place to learn. Some differences we can see on the outside, and other differences we cannot see until we get to know someone. To emphasize this point, we read and discussed "A Bad Case of Stripes", in which protagonist Camilla learns how to be true to herself. We played "Guess Who" to learn about some of the things that make our classmates special and unique!
At-Home Extension Questions:
We finished November by talking about stress, what it feels like and how to recognize it in ourselves. We played "Coping Skills Bingo" to introduce many different healthy ideas to help ourselves feel better during times of stress. Bingo winners as well as a few students recognized for their sportsmanship went home with their very own coping skill fortune tellers! We reflected on which coping skills work best for each of us and why. We selected our top coping skills as "apps" to bring home on our "smartphone" handouts.
At-Home Extension Questions:
In December we talked about conflicts and healthy, positive ways to be heard, listen to others, and settle conflicts peacefully. Some examples include "I feel" statements, active listening skills, releasing tension and compromise. In a camping-themed lesson, we also emphasized why it is important not to "fan the flames" in a conflict and what actions may cause the conflict to grow.
At-Home Discussion Questions:
In January, we learned and practiced a new coping skill called "mindfulness". Mindfulness is all about paying attention in a new way...paying attention to ourselves! When we are mindful, we pay attention to our what our brains and bodies are doing right now in the present moment. By taking deep breaths and thinking calm thoughts, our brain can spread a feeling of peace to the rest of our bodies! In this mindfulness activity, we used our imaginations and pretended we were in a snowglobe. We thought about people, places, or activities that bring us a sense of peace and calm, or "settle our snowglobes".
At-Home Extension Questions:
We are now halfway through the year and it is a great time to reflect and review! We played a jeopardy review game to ensure we all remember key points from this year. Question topics included conflict vs. bullying, how to be an upstander, stop-walk-talk, the role of the school counselor, and how to ask for help.
At-Home Extension Questions:
We kicked off our February Kindness celebration with a fun small group log cabin building activity, which showed us that the foundation of our school community truly depends on kindness. We explored the question, "How do students feel valued and important in our school community?" We each "built" our own cabins with our ideas for answering this question. Please on the lookout for the Counselor's 28-Day Kindness Challenge (pictured above) and information on Kindness Spirit week that will come home after this lesson!
At-Home Extension Questions:
We kicked off our career exploration unit by talking about career interests. It is important to be interested (or "like") your future career so that you can be happy each day at work! We completed a super fun "scoot" game where we quickly checked off whether or not we found 30 different activities/hobbies "interesting" or "not interesting". We then scored our game card and reviewed possible careers that matched our interests.
At-Home Extension Questions:
In our second career exploration lesson, each student was explored the "Kid Search" feature of the Virginia Career View website. We completed a rough draft of our 4th grade Academic & Career Plan Portfolio artifact by researching 2 careers of interest. For each career, we identified job duties/responsibilities as well as related school subjects. The 4th graders loved this kid-friendly career search tool which can also be accessed from home!
At-Home Extension Questions: