2nd/3rd grade Counselor Welcome!!
What an energetic and exciting week for our Sycamore Springs Elementary Tigers!! I had such a good time welcoming nearly 250+ - 2nd and 3rd graders to Care Class. For both grade levels, I got to play a little with my free trial of an animated program called Go Animate for Schools. I had so much fun! I was inspired when I saw a video clip of other counselor intro videos on YouTube so I decided to adapt and put my tech skills to the test!! Enjoy my first animation EVER <here>
I showed students the "Counselor First Aid Kit" and taught them about the various occupations of people around the school. I adapted my kit from The Savvy School Counselor kit which describes some of the special things that counselors are especially skilled at doing for students. We wrapped up by reading one of my favorite books, "Do Unto Otters."
In this book, Mr. Rabbit’s new neighbors are Otters. OTTERS! But he doesn’t know anything about otters. Will they get along? Will they be friends? Just treat otters the same way you’d like them to treat you, advises Mr. Owl. As we read, we wrote the words that Mr. Rabbit discovers are important to him like friendliness, being polite, cooperativeness, kind and honesty. We wrapped up this fun and touching read aloud with a group activity where the students were able to speak directly to each other in their classroom community by giving compliments where someone in their class demonstrated some of these character traits for them as they started this new school year!
It was most amazing to watch the face of the student who was receiving the compliment as most of the time, they had no idea that simply asking a friend to sit with them at lunch or play a game on the playground would have such an impact on the person being asked. I reminded the students that we were all new to our campus this year and sometimes the smallest acts of kindness mean the most!
