We won't send you spam. Finally, a variety of virtual platforms and tech tools are outlined to assist school counselors in virtual lessons, schoolwide virtual events and direct communication with students and stakeholders. Then, I challenge students to think of or find one solution that could help tackle all of the problems on the list. National School Counseling Week is February 1-5th, 2021. For example: In an eighth-grade virtual lesson, students first saw a Google Doc with directions and links to each step of their assignment: Opening directions and introduction video (link to video in Google Drive), Directions about reading selection and discussion posts (link to folder with the reading selections for students to choose from). Note: Some tools may allow students to share responses by typing an answer or by sharing pictures (hand-drawn or created on a device). I find it’s a good starting point for building connections and developing entry-level trust for group. Unsubscribe at any time. Give them space to explore how mindfulness can actually benefit them. Walk in Our School Interactive Website/ Activities Managing Stress and Anxiety Google Slideshow. Allow students to share their work in a variety of ways (drawing, writing, etc.). Students identify problems like interpersonal conflict, feeling stressed by schoolwork, being overwhelmed by responsibilities and extracurricular activities, feeling like they don’t fit it, and the list goes on. Middle school is a time of immense growth and transition. In this article, you’ll get inspiration and ideas for distance learning community building activities for middle school and high school students. For example, start with Hello Week: Have students create a Flipgrid video sharing how they would greet peers face to face and/or virtually. I would like to try that as well. More and more education is moving online. As they transition from childhood to adolescence, students in middle school face a time of exploration, discovery, and physical and mental development. When we have some comfort with breathing exercises, I introduce short guided meditation activities. Conflict Resolution Activities for Middle School Skill-Building (CRAMSS) is an online repository of conflict resolution education exercises designed to engage middle school students in the fun, collaborative learning of appropriate conflict management and problem solving. Editor’s Note: I have written this blog post in 2020 with a variety of ideas. Do a 5-minute activity just to introduce students and show them they can actually do yoga. After I have some buy-in and have piqued their interest in this seemingly magical practice that can address a whole host of problems they have identified in their lives, we start small. These active mindfulness activities were really the sweet spot for my middle schoolers when they started to say they really enjoyed our mindful time! If applicable, allow them to share in the way they feel most comfortable or have access to share. Much of mindfulness hinges on slowing and controlling breathing to truly tune in to the body. Below is a list of resources that can be used in providing middle school lessons. Students like to try again. Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School, College ≤ 15 minutes. Head outside for some of these activities: Take your students on a nature walk. Middle school can be a challenging yet exciting time for students. I am working with pre schooler and primary section (grade 1 to grade 5). If you have more to say, break it up in different videos with other activities in between. Fill us in below in the comments section! Once your students have the hang of this practice (it does take practice), they’ll be able to do this for longer periods of time without the cues. You also can embed the links to Nearpod lessons in your Google Classroom, websites, Edmodo, Canvas and other platforms. This helped them realise correct way of breathing. Be mindful in small groups/clubs/team meetings that confidentiality is limited for the group because we do not know who is off camera in someone else’s home. Diversity Council of Rochester, Minnesota, suggests the simple activity for middle school students of exchanging information about their own names in small groups. A collection of sites to live webcams, virtual tours/trips, and other miscellaneous fun educational sites. Alexandria, VA 22314, (703) 683-ASCA Unsubscribe anytime. (This site is updated every few days, so to see the latest links be sure to refresh the site if you're a return visitor!) Invite students to participate in schoolwide “events”: Use Flipgrid or Padlet for a week-long or month-long campaign around a topic or theme. From our youngest students through graduating seniors, counselors can help students navigate social situations, develop coping skills to deal with school and homelife stressors, and grow through social and emotional wellness training. ... Middle School Parenting Tips During Closure Mental Health Wellness Tips for Quarantine. They like to get better, practice, and feel like they’ve grown or accomplished something. Subjects: Special Education, School Counseling, Speech Therapy. After the resources is a way to create a virtual lesson from a face-to-face lesson. Use short, 5-minute or fewer activities to give them opportunities for success and to pique their interest. The purpose of these activities is to build … These fun team-building activities can help teacher teams, or classes, bond and maintain social relationships while schools are closed As a teacher, team building is something that comes naturally. Middle School Mindfulness Activities. As students gain comfort with short, simple exercises, we try longer activities and different types of mindfulness exercises. Let’s face it, kids are used to having worksheets and templates and preprinted note pages, but sometimes I don’t have time to gather those fancy materials. Virtual School Counseling Services. | Powered by WordPress. Link to discussion posts by class and directions about responding to peers’ discussion posts. What are the things causing turmoil in their lives right now? Help students plan enjoyable activities as a form of self-care. If you have a school garden or have the space to create even a small plot, do a gardening exercise. I like to first start with recorded meditations so students can use headphones to listen. As a counselor for 10 years and teacher for three years, I understand the challenge of … I am a mental health counselor turned school counselor and curriculum writer hoping to reach every single student and spark social, emotional, and academic growth! We are here to promote … Go Noodle SEL Movement and Mindfulness Videos: Free, fun, funny videos of movement and mindfulness videos for students that you can share via link or embed in Google Classroom. The same goes for individual sessions; we do not see who is off camera but also hearing the conversation. Easy Ways to Make Individual Student Connections, Successful Transition from Elementary to Middle School. If it is instruction provided by the school counselor in the lesson, consider the following: If the lesson includes discussion, post a prompt or question on your digital platform using a link ink to a Padlet (students type their answers), Flipgrid (students video record their answers) or Discuss Post (If available on your platform, it allows students to respond to each other’s discussion posts), or a add a question or comment section on your platform. Mar 23, 2020 - Explore Cherie Moore's board "virtual counselor" on Pinterest. This school counseling blog will deliver fresh ideas to help you deliver your best program yet! Videos should be short – 10 minutes max. One thing is reliable, though: adolescents love to know why. Create a short video in Powtoon or Adobe Spark Video about your topic. Provide them the link to the folder. If you’re looking to incorporate more mindfulness exercises into your middle school counseling toolbox, start slowly and small! Why are we doing this? Privacy Policy. Subscribe to our weekly email for the latest posts and resources from Confident Counselors. I’ve had loads of fun teaching mindfulness to elementary-aged students, but when I first threw out the idea to some of my middle schoolers, they looked at me like I had three heads. Coronavirus Specific Freebies: Coronavirus Stress Activities - Bright Futures Counseling . Types: Worksheets, Activities, Task Cards. This week is not about the school counselor itself, it is about the work we do, the program, the differences and all of the challenges we have overcome to build the program at our schools. Are Virtual School Counseling Activities Even a Thing? With it comes the need for resources and ideas that we can do online. I have recently started with mindfulness activity with primary section. Below is a list of resources that can be used in providing middle school lessons. For middle school counseling, providing lessons to students that are interactive or offer variety in tasks can be helpful in engaging students. For middle school counseling, providing lessons to students that are interactive or offer variety in tasks can be helpful in engaging students. When they are given the opportunity to review actual research and see facts and figures from studies, adolescents are much more like to buy in to the process because they can see the why behind it. Explore my counseling resources: Counselor Keri. Grab some cardstock, watercolors, brushes, and straws for a guided painting activity. These activities are great for the whole month of December. Hi keri! I show them studies about how mindfulness improves memory and attention, lowers stress levels, increases happiness, and promotes social connections and altruism. Consult with the teacher advisor (if applicable) to coordinate guidance and advisement activities. 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To introduce breathing exercises, I first model controlled breathing on my own in front of everyone. If seated breathing and meditation isn’t doing it for your students, don’t be afraid to try active mindfulness exercises! In which I asked them to imagine balloon as their stomach. Whether you are a teacher, community leader, or parent looking to do something fun with kids that are in different places, I’ve gathered up some ideas for your Virtual Activities. Also, time is built into the schedule for teachers to plan and collaborate with our behavioral health team to develop ongoing synchronous SEL activities for our students. Again, I keep these short to ease them in! Children grow up hearing stories about the meaning and origin of their given names or nicknames They’re less likely to give up if the newness is quick in the beginning. School counseling in a virtual world is challenging. Keep reading to find out how I hooked my students’ interest and the middle school mindfulness activities that my students actually enjoyed. Examples of activity types include icebreaker questions, virtual campfires, and group fitness classes. This is one of my favorite get to know you activities for group counseling because students are always so surprised by how much they have in common with others in the group! How do you get buy-in with your students when it comes to mindfulness? Uptill now I have tried breathing exercise. question which can be posited to a class at the beginning of a year Share a video from another source to begin the lesson focus/set the topic/etc. What are your favorite middle school mindfulness activities? Copyright text 2018 by Confident Counselors. Is it hard to complete a project that large? See more ideas about school counseling, school counselor, middle school counseling. Read our Privacy Policy. I show them the research. If you teach career readiness in middle school, you likely need to incorporate a wide variety of professional and 21st Century skills in your lessons.. As a career readiness curriculum developer, we work with teachers like you every day looking for new resources to help students build these skills. All Rights Reserved. This is the perfect time to set up a counseling facebook page, twitter account, or even your own website. The intention is to provide virtual check in services by Webex, Schoology, phone or email to help guide your child with age appropriate coping skills. But middle schoolers aren’t always the easiest to engage! This gardening-themed elementary school counseling classroom guidance lesson unit includes 15 lessons on topics such as emotions, self esteem, respect, kindness, goal setting, career education, and much more! Thankfully, with the internet, there are so many ways to connect with students and families. Adolescents already feel like they’re on a stage in front of their peers at all times, so we don’t start with a tricky yoga sequence or a 30-minute guided meditation because that’s a sure way to discourage participation! As with the other mindfulness exercises, start small. School Counseling Freebies. I learned all about proper flow and sequence and some helpful strategies for dispelling the awkward cloud in the air. Many school counselors have offered these free resources to make distance learning more accessible. Students will use the brushes to drop paint on the paper and then will use the straws to blow the paint on the paper (hello, breathing exercise!). Use a consistent platform to share your information, announcements, lessons, schoolwide events, etc., to stakeholders: Engage students in sharing and discussion in lessons: For direct contact with students, families and teachers: Use video/phone contact for individual sessions with students for academic check-ins and social/emotional support; parent or family/teacher conferences and meetings; meetings with school-counseling-sponsored clubs; class, team or grade level meetings; small groups, etc. Provide step-by-step instructions through the lesson with links via a post or Google doc. If students share personal information, other people not in the group may hear it. 5 School Counseling Activities with a Plain Sheet of Paper. The would you rather activity asks students to evaluate choices and explain their thinking These questions are a great way to get a … Create an Empathy Word Wall: Have students add to a Padlet wall with phrases and statements they would say to peers to show empathy. Some are premade lessons, some resources are videos, texts or other activities that can be used to put lessons together. Read to them on video and share via Google Doc (upload Word documents to Google so it’s easy to access). Some are … When introducing the concept of mindfulness, I begin by having my students create a problem list. If sitting in the classroom doing this is uncomfortable for your students, take them outside to practice! Weekly emails with the latest posts and resources from Confident Counselors. I'd like to receive the free email course. Please try again. Remind them that they should not talk during the activity because you’ll give them cues throughout. We start with simple, 2-3 minute seated breathing exercises using tracing printables so that students can focus their attention on just what they’re doing and not worry about meeting eyes with others during the process. Record yourself and share your slides. This takes off some of the social focus so they’re less worried about if others are looking at them. I also give students printables to trace while they practice controlling their breathing using figure 8 breathing, rainbow breathing, and star breathing to get the hang of it. See more ideas about counseling activities, school social work, social emotional learning. 15 Community Building Distance Learning Activities Middle Schoolers Will LOVE! Is it just homework in general or one specific assignment? Students do a bit of research using iPads. Use sites that have articles based on your topic such as. How do we get buy-in? All lessons don’t necessarily have to have an activity separate from the discussion. I ask them to be as specific as possible. After they practice this way, I do read some guided meditation activities to help them notice their bodies, recognize feelings about certain events, or pinpoint sensations and emotions tied to certain experiences or memories. Suite 310 What were you planning to teach and how can you share each part of the lesson virtually? Scenarios are geared toward middle and high school st. Social/Emotional Learning Video Lessons Week 1, Social/Emotional Learning Video Lessons Week 2, Social/Emotional Learning Video Lessons Week 3, Social/Emotional Learning Video Lessons Week 4 Helping Children Understand COVID-19, BrainPop: Engaging learning games, animated videos and activities, Create Virtual School Counseling Lessons from Face-to-Face Lessons. Find out more. Yoga can sound scary and intimidating to adolescents, especially if they have preconceived notions of what yoga is or what it requires. Welcome to Virtual School Activities for all ages! Give them pinwheels or bubbles (middle schoolers go wild for these things too) to practice deep inhales and slow exhales. Love in the Time of Corona: A Homebound Self-Care Guide for Parents and Students - School Counselor Stephanie Just like my 3-5 Google Classroom, my middle school Google Classroom is almost identical, although I do expect more high quality work from my 6th, 7th and 8th graders. So I tried balloon activity. There was an error submitting your subscription. Post tips, ideas and activities that the families at your school will find helpful. We also repeat activities. Students record three good things that happened to them each day for a week. Post videos of yourself reading social emotional learning books. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has become popular amongst K-12 educators and even education service providers, such as American College Testing (ACT). While this is a whole new arena for so many of us, yes, you can find and use counseling resources for Virtual Learning. Students can participate virtually by creating videos in Flipgrid or sharing words/pictures in Padlet. SEL is a priority and will be reflected in the activities that students will engage in during the first several days of the school year. These resources are age-appropriate for elementary and middle school students and are typically used in a classroom or a small group setting. Introduce your youngest students to the school counseling program! Start with simple poses and talk them through the whole process – nothing creates awkwardness for adolescents quite like silence and a chair pose. They can “share” with you through Google or add it to a pre-set Google folder. The lessons in the Nearpod library can also be edited to fit your students’ needs and time constraints. Tuning in doesn’t have to be accomplished in a seat. What are their stressors? asca@schoolcounselor.org, © Copyright 2020 American School Counselor Association. When they can see studies that have been done with people their own ages who have benefitted from the practice, adolescents are more likely to be willing to give it a try themselves. In my office, I always have plain copy paper and it is an integral part of my counseling program. Then I give them the studies to review and then give them space to research it on their own for a few minutes. Virtual team building activities are group exercises via platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. Jul 1, 2017 - Explore Lyn Bush's board "Lunch Bunch activities", followed by 119 people on Pinterest. Note: You can create your own interactive lessons (either led live by the school counselor or student-paced lessons) in Nearpod as well. We know adolescents need mindfulness, but how do we get them engaged? Finding middle school Christmas activities does not need to be a challenge. Many of my students end up taping these printables inside their notebooks to use throughout the day. If your students are up for a challenge, introduce them to yoga (call it focused stretching if your school requires – the benefits are the same!). We try laughing exercises, making of faces and guessing emotions, story telling method, and videos. Online school counselors work with students to help them throughout their K–12 journey. Thanks for being aproachable and willingly sharing ideas. The school environment has a huge impact on the development of children these ages, making the activities they do at school extremely important. We spend a lesson or session doing this task and the students report their findings which often range from silly things like quitting school to thoughtful responses like seeking therapy. K-2 virtual physical activities; 3-5 virtual physical activities; Google Classroom Setup For Middle School. What about that assignment is troubling? Let students sink their hands into the soil and help them notice the sensations they experience during the activity. Cue students to choose colors that represent the emotions they notice in their bodies now and to notice their sensations as they watch the paint move on the paper. Grades: 5 th, 6 th, 7 th, 8 th, 9 th, 10 th, 11 th, 12 th. Unlike school counseling for middle or high school students, counseling elementary school students requires more hands-on work by families. There are some great free activities students can do on their own without feeling like they’re on a stage. Why does this matter? School counseling in a virtual world is challenging. School counseling at the elementary school level during a pandemic, or at other times when virtual school counseling is required, may seem more manageable when viewed through the domains of school counseling. At this point, I introduce the concept of mindfulness, but I don’t just tell students what it is and tell them that it will help. Give them space to explore how mindfulness can actually benefit them. When we have the technology available, I also let students practice using iPads and headphones with the Calm app. We go on like this for a while. Use short, 5-minute or fewer activities to give them opportunities for success and to pique their interest. ASCA Toolkit: Virtual Middle School Counseling School counseling in a virtual world is challenging. Look through this blog post to find Christmas activities that are broken into two categories: curriculum-related and fun activities. Guide them through noticing things they see, what they smell, things they hear, and their own sensations and emotions as you walk. Mindfulness with middle schoolers: a piece of cake or labor of love? I recently completed a certification with YogaEd that was fantastic. It’s really great talking with you. Below you will find free resources – lessons, activities, and printables – in the following skill areas: Communication, Cooperation, Emotion Regulation, Empathy, Impulse Control, and Social Initiation. Elementary students jump at the chance to breathe like a butterfly or do a silly animal-themed yoga activity. The login page will open in a new tab. Mindfulness with Middles: Teaching Teens to Practice Mindfulness. Share link to form with students to complete the form. SEL no longer resides solely in counseling offices; it has become a collective movement to ensure educators meet the needs of the whole student. School Counseling Lessons for Middle School Students. If you and your child are interested in a check-in (virtual or phone), please complete the information located in the virtual counseling page or by clicking the "virtual counseling" button below. 8 Fun Activities for Virtual Learning Meetings Would You Rather Debates – Virtual learning with students can be activity-based. Three Good Things for Students. As you can imagine, this list is often long! Students in our class need to feel that their unique voices, opinions, and experiences matter. You don’t have to spend a whole, 30-45 minute lesson doing one activity! Introduce your students to a wide variety of mindfulness exercises so they can find their perfect fit, whether it’s simple breathing, meditation, or more active practices. If you’re looking to incorporate more mindfulness exercises into your middle school counseling toolbox, start slowly and small! So when they all were blowing balloons I asked few questions like: what is happening to balloon she you all are blowing an air into it? middle school students, administrators, all teachers, and parents that include BRIDGE legislation implementation to highlight guidance, counseling, career interests, and advisement services. Record a video using Zoom (or WeVideo, Loom, Screencastify). Below is a list of resources that can be used in providing middle school lessons. I use these lessons with Mindfulness can easily be used as a warm up or wrap up to any classroom guidance or small group activity. I am a mental health counselor turned school counselor and curriculum writer hoping to spark social, emotional, and academic growth! What will happen if I leave the balloon without tying a knot? In that I observed that majority of children’s stomach used to go in while inhaling. Jennifer Hall, Atlanta Public Schools educational technology specialist, has created several training videos and resources for distance learning: Provided by Laura Ross, Middle School Counselor, Five Forks Middle School, Lawrenceville, Ga. 1101 King Street They can also tune into smells and sounds while working in the garden. For pre schooler my main goal is to make them aware about their emotions. If the lesson includes a student, use these options: Suggested technology tools for middle school counselors. But I even liked the idea of pinwheel activity which you have discussed above. For middle school counseling, providing lessons to students that are interactive or offer variety in tasks can be helpful in engaging students. As with other group counseling activities for middle school students, this game gives young people an opportunity to develop team-building skills and to discuss sensitive topics in a safe setting. -  Designed by Thrive Themes First, the class will create the game board by taking a piece of poster board or foam core board, topped with paper. Students can even put these creations in $1 frames to keep as a reminder to pause and notice. Later I have tried bubbles activity and now I am planning to try straw painting with them. If yoga isn’t something you’re totally comfortable with yourself, use videos from certified instructors or attend a training yourself! Please log in again. No spam, ever. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. I knew that buy-in would be a little tougher with this age group (but totally worth the effort). Is it hard to work in a group?