Why Are You So Grumpy? Parent presentation on helping children express anger

Why It’s Important: After analyzing the school data on Positive Discipline/Office Referral forms, I realized that 87% of the write-ups were in some way related to children inappropriately expressing their anger. Because of this information, the school counselors have conducted classroom guidance lessons, led small groups, and counseled individual students on how to effectively manage their anger. When considering the child systemically, it is also important to have extra support from home in handling their anger. For this reason, we put together a parent workshop to help parents know what they can do to assist their child in handling anger.

Event Details: The parent breakfast/workshop was held on a Friday morning from 8:00am-9:00am in the school media center. This time included opportunities for parents to mix and mingle over breakfast, and ask questions at the end.

Advertising: To advertise, we sent home a small flyer about the breakfast workshop with each student. We also made a “connect-ED” phone call to reach all parents. Flyers were posted around the school and we gave teachers an electronic form of the flyer to email to parents. Paper copies were made for parents without internet access. Furthermore, the workshop was also advertised through word of mouth during parent contacts at school and over the phone.

Introduction: As parents arrive, they helped themselves to some donuts or bagels and coffee, and were able to speak with other parents and with the school counselors. The presentation began with a quick pre assessment to determine how much the parents already know about helping their child with anger. This served as a focusing activity to get parents into the right frame of mind. Answers to the pre assessment were discussed during the presentation.

Activity: We presented a PowerPoint that includes information about what to do when your child is angry and how to help your child calm down. Included in the presentation was a list of books and resources on where they can go for more information, as well as ideas for parents to include when creating a calm-down basket for their child. Specific ideas were discussed as well as some tips for parents to consider when disciplining their children. 

Conclusion: To wrap things up, we summarized the main concepts covered and asked for specific questions and concerns from the parents. Parents were invited to stick around to talk individually with the counselors about other concerns they may have for their child. Before parents leave, they filled out a post assessment, which included the questions from the pre assessment, and a section for feedback and suggestions for future workshops.  

Results: 15 parents attended this workshop, but informational materials reached an additional five parents who could not attend, and four teachers also requested the materials for their parents. As a result of this workshop, there was a significant increase in parent’s ability to name concrete strategies to help their child handle anger. Before the workshop, 8 of the 15 parents were not able to provide specific things to help their child calm down. After the workshop, 14 out of 15 were able to list definite at least two strategies that could work with their child. Overall satisfaction ratings for this presentation were highly positive, with suggestions for improvement being to have more interactive activities, more ideas for older students, and some specific examples for the points covered. 

—Information in our presentation came from: 

A Volcano in My Tummy: Helping Children to Handle Anger 

and  

— www.kidshealth.org

Classroom Behavior Management

At my internship, guidance was a part of the Specials rotation. One thing that I focused on was how to effectively manage the most "energetic" classes. In my Master's program, we are not taught how to manage a classroom as a school counselor. I was an Education major during my undergraduate days, but the discipline that is appropriate for a classroom teacher may not always be appropriate for a school counselor to use. This has been a growing experience for me, leading me to look for alternative ways to manage a classroom effectively. Below are some ideas that I have tried, and some ideas that I have found on Pinterest that would be easy for a school counselor to implement in a classroom.

1. Mr.Potato Head-  I have used this as a visual for whole body listening. At start of a classroom guidance
or small group lesson, discuss what ears, eyes, mouth, hands, brain (hat), and bottom should be doing, adding body parts as you discuss. If you notice that kids are not using their body appropriately during the group or class, remove that part of Mr.Potato head. Replace when you have everyone's attention again.

At the end of class, if Mr.Potato Head has all of his parts, give the class a compliment when their teacher arrives to pick them up, or another agreed upon incentive (see below). For smaller groups, you could pass around Mr.Potato Head at the end.

2. Counselor versus Students game- Draw a T-chart on the board, labeling one side "counselor" and the other side "students". When students are actively participating and using whole body listening, the class receives a point. If the counselor is waiting on students to finish conversations, or is not feeling respected by the class, the counselor receives a point. The objective is for the class to have more points than the counselor. 

3. Erasing letters of a word- Write the one-word topic of the lesson on the board at the beginning of class. If class is speaking out of turn, not following directions, or disrespecting teacher, erase a letter. The objective is to still have a part of the word left on the board at the end of class. 

4. Building a word- Similar to the erasing letters of the word, the class must work together to build the vocabulary word by showing positive behaviors. The objective is for the class to build the entire word by the end of class.

5. Bucket Fillers- Introduce this using the book, "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?". Remind the students throughout the class to think about if they are filling your bucket, and/or filling another student's bucket.

6. Peace Makers- Introduce by talking about peace. Discuss ways to make or break the peace in a classroom. Create an anchor chart with things that are "peace makers", and things that are "peace breakers". Through the lessons, remind the class to be peace-makers, not peace breakers. (Click picture for source)

7. Mystery Person-  Before each lesson, pick a Mystery Student to watch for. Do not tell the class who the mystery person is. To redirect students during the lesson say, "I wonder if my Mystery Student is on task!"  If the Mystery Student follows the “rules” they receive a reward of some kind. If the Mystery Student does not follow the rules - a brief, vague discussion is had with the whole group about what we should be working on to earn "Mystery Student". Source: Growing Kinders Blog

8. Class Bingo- Use a BINGO board for each class, and a bag with the individual spaces listed or bingo balls- (ex. B3, N5, G1). If the class is following directions and being respectful, choose a student to randomly pick a number from the bag, and color in that spot on their class BINGO board. When class gets an entire row of numbers filled in (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) the class will receive a special reward/party.

9. Marble Jar- When you catch your class doing something really well, add a marble/pompom to the jar. The objective is for the class to fill the jar to a certain point to obtain a class incentive. 

10. Quiet Critters- Quiet Critters are Pompoms with googly eyes and felt feet. They only appear when students are being quiet. Each student receives a quiet critter when they are being quiet, but have to turn in their quiet critters if asked to stop talking. Source: Teaching Chick Blog

Counseling Classroom Incentives:

• Game day (Teambuilding, following directions)
• Minute to Win It games (builds on teamwork skills)
• Feelings charades/ Onion Head cards (identify feelings, building empathy)
• Brain Breaks for extended amount of time
• Compliment to teacher
• Students enter drawing for special seating during classtime
• Pass around a puppet friend
• Share individual stories at end of class

Mr.Potato Head- classroom management

Introducing: Mr.Potato Head! I have used this as a visual for whole body listening. At start of a classroom guidance or small group lesson, discuss what ears, eyes, mouth, hands, brain (hat), and bottom should be doing, adding body parts as you discuss. If you notice that kids are not using their body appropriately during the group or class, remove that part of Mr.Potato head. Replace when you have everyone's attention again. 

At the end of class, if Mr.Potato Head has all of his parts, give the class a compliment when their teacher arrives to pick them up, or another agreed upon incentive. For smaller groups, you could pass around Mr.Potato Head at the end. 

(I believe the original Mr.Potato Head classroom management strategy came from here, but please correct me if I'm wrong!)
How would you use Mr.Potato Head?






(Inspiration for Mr.Potato Head from here)

Progress Cards

I recently bought the Progress Cards book- this is honestly one of my best school counseling purchases yet! It is a great motivational tool to increase positive behaviors! I am using the blank cards to let the students come up with their own goals, using cards as reference.

I have been using the blank practice cards with a few students so that they can work towards their very specific goals that they set for themselves. For younger kids, I have created a smaller practice card that only has two or three blanks for goals.

Once we have decided on what goals to set, we then use the counselor and teacher rewards to see what the student is willing to work for. For example- 10 minutes of your teacher's undivided attention, helping your favorite teacher for 20 minutes, having lunch with a friend, getting 15 minutes on the computer, and a positive phone call home. The student sorts out the reward cards into three groups: Absolutely Love (big rewards), Like (small rewards), and Don't like (put aside). The small rewards will be a daily reward for achieving the day's goals. The big rewards will be a weekly reward for achieving the daily goals for all 5 days. I have been very surprised at the things that the kids have picked that they really want to work for!