Counseling Groups

Group Counseling

School counselors provide topic related group counseling opportunities for students who share similar concerns related to making and keeping positive friendships, changes to their family makeup, and/or a loss or death in their family.

Friendship Groups

Students work together to reach a common goal of improving their social skills, while making and keeping friends.

1st Grade - 2nd Grade:

  • Students in friendship group become part of the ¨Bucket Squad¨, which is part of the Have you Filled a Bucket Today? program by Carol McCloud. The basic premise is that each of us carries an invisible bucket filled with happy thoughts and feelings. We need each other to help fill our buckets. Find more information at bucketfillers.com

  • Another frienship group program used is the Time for School curriculum through Model Me Kids, which uses video modeling, discussion and practice to teach students basic skills to be used in the classroom, playground, and library, Skills learned learned include; friendly greatings, listening to the teacher, showing interest in friends, sharing, and saying ¨sorry¨. Visit the Model Me Kids website to learn more.

3rd Grade - 7th Grade:

  • Students in these upper grades learn friendship skills through the Model Me Kids curriculum, which uses video modeling, discussion and practice to sharpen social skills, make new friends and keep existing friends. Skills learned include; friendly greetings, empathy, getting along at recess/phyed, showing interest, compromising, and handling rejection. Visit the Model Me Kids website to learn more.

Changing Family Groups

Changing family groups are offered to students in 1st grade through 6th grade. Through group participation, students share common thoughts and feelings about their experiences of being part of a changing family. Some examples of a changing family are (but not limited to) parent separation or divorice, absence of a family member, and a birth or death in the family.

Students will develop positive coping strategies through the following activities:

  • Zones of Regulation - Zones of Regulation lessons help students recognize their feelings, and use strategies when needed to stay calm, focused, and ready to learn. The ideas is that we can be in any given zone based on how we are feeling at that moment.

  • Feelings Bingo - students learn to identify feelings, including situations might make them feel a certian way, through an interactive bingo game using cards with feeling faces. Strategies for coping with uncomfortable feelings are discussed and practiced.

  • Gonoodle - this website is used to help either engergize students, or calm them. Students participate while watching gonoodle videos. We take time for discussion afterward.

  • Communication - Students can control what they do, and that includes how they communicate with others. We practice using ¨I messages¨ which is a way to talk with someone in order to express feelings and resolve conflict. The format for using I messages is as follows:

I feel ___________________ (say the feeling word describing how you feel)

when you ______________ (say what the person did that made you feel that way)

I want __________________ (say what you want that will resolve the conflict)

Students are encouraged to use ¨I messages¨ with peers, family members, teachers or anyone else in order to resolve a problem.

I messages are to be said using a calm respectful tone of voice, and one must allow the other person to use an I message as well if they so wish.