Mrs. Crabtree's Counseling Corner

Every year I find myself trying to figure out a good way to show students how to set goals, why it's important to do so, and how tracking the goals fits into all this.  Oh and did I mention I am trying to do this with Kindergarten through fifth graders?!!  It's seemingly impossible.  Or so I thought.  I THINK I have found a way to do this without totally confusing them, and make it entertaining as well! It's going to require you to look a little silly, so be warned!  I got some helpf rom a great resource , Teaching and Tapas, on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I really like the goal setting worksheet she has because it includes the action plan!  Click HERE for the complete lesson plan I developed to help teach Goal Setting.  I would LOVE to hear your feedback !

I have created this worksheet as an assessment or pre-assessment for students learning about Habit 2.  I wanted to see what they remembered from last year, so I gave this to my students in 1st and 2nd. My kindergartners used this as a means of applying what we have learned in Guidance that day about Habit 2.  Hopefully you find it usesful!

My students are really taking off with this Career Exploration Project we are working on.  In week one, we talked about the Brain Smarts or Multiple Intelligence.  On Week two, the students took the Mulitple Intelligence's Inventory and determined their top 3 Smarts.  Now we are in Week three, and the students are developing projects that they will share with the class.  I have allowed the students to use their creativity in creating this project as well as given them some freedoms.  I feel like it would be silly to do a project on Multiple Intelligence's, and then bind them to a project that they may not excel at because it doesn't match their intelligence. Therefore, I have given them this Project Planning Worksheet to guide what their presentation should contain.  This also promotes Habit 2, and the need to plan in order to create anything. See the Lesson Plan for this lesson to get a clear picture of what this lesson is all about. h...

These websites have been so helpful as I work with my students on careers.  Hopefully you will find them helpful as well. CareerSmarts  Youtube Playlist of Careers:  Thank you  School Counseling by Heart!   She has compiled several video clips of occupations into one easy playlist for  students to explore immediately. Career View A great site that helps kids explore their careers based on their interests, subjects they like in school, or the career clusters.  After a few simple questions the students are able to see a list of all the jobs that may interest them. Career One-stop:   This is a great site for my older students. It allows them to type in the job they are looking for and provides a lot of information. It gives way more information than my students really need at this stage; however it's an excellent site!  Paws in Pawland This is a great site for my K-2 students.  It has them answer a few basic questions, ...

Once again, I am excited by what one of my favorite bloggers has shared in helping make our jobs so much easier.  She has compiled several videos for students to view that have all kinds of careers explained.  This is such a great idea and took a lot work of work.  Thank you School Counseling By Heart This Weeks Lesson: First, I want to do a quick review of Multiple Intelligence's.  I will show this great video I found that is kid friendly and informative. Next, I want to show the kids what they will do next week in centers, which is explore various careers of their choice.  They will watch a video, and fill out the career investigation survey.  I want them to be able to understand how to find the types of Brain Smarts that are required in these types of jobs so that they can make good choices for themselves based on the smarts they have discovered. Video one :  Design Squad:  Use this to introduce the activity that we will do today. ...

I continue to be amazed at the wonderful School Counseling Community I have gained from Social Networking!  One of my favorite blogs is School Counseling By Heart!   She has inspired me in so many ways and given me tons of ideas to use with my students.  One in particular that I wanted to share with you is her work with careers.  Go visit her website  and see how she is using Career Smarts to get students thinking about their futures. One thing that I am doing right now with Grades 3-5, is using the Inventory that she has shared to get a picture of where their strengths lie.  This is a simple Multiple Intelligences inventory that allows students to see a print out of what kind of smart they are.  We will later use it to match up careers that go along with their strengths.  I have used this week to explore how Habit 2 teaches us to Begin with the End in Mind.  We have discussed how setting goals for your career are i...

We've covered our Back to School Topics and we are now settling in to September where we focus our attention toward Habit 2:  Begin with the End in Mind.  We begin talking about Goal setting and establishing our goals in our Leadership Notebooks.  If you haven't heard about Leadership Notebooks, you will want to keep checking my blog.  I'll have all kinds of resources, and ideas for you in the coming weeks.  In essence, a Leadership notebook is a way that our students (Grades K-5) track their academic and behavioral progress.  My job as the School Counselor, is to help them establish goals and be able to understand why we set goals, and how important it is to track them frequently.  When Parent Teacher Conferences come around, we no longer hold the tradition type conference.  These conferences are all Student Led.  I know that sounds crazy, but it's fabulous!  I'll be posting more about Student Led Conferences soon as well.  Meanw...

Begin with the End in Mind We use data notebooks in our school and it's my job to teach appropriate goal setting. I use SMART goals as a way to help kids remember the correct way to write goals. Here is the worksheet I use to guide this process. At the bottom, you will notice a simple template for helping the students fill in their goals.  This way, all the goals look the same, and ensures they are 'SMART.'