Never Ending Cards

Every so often, I see things or hear of things that get my wheels turning in my head. I read about a "Never Ending Card" on Dawn's Stamping Thoughts blog and just had to try to make one! It took me about a hundred attempts to get the folding and cutting right, but it was definitely worth the effort because now I'm in love with these cards!  There is a great tutorial on her website- I'm not even going to try to explain how it's done!

Meet the Counselor Cards

After mastering the art of folding never ending cards, I started thinking about how a school counselor could use something like this. One thought was doing a "meet the counselor" card. I wanted to include some information about what the counselor is there for, and important information kids need to know. I'll need to go back and work on the wording and put a bit more effort into the graphics, but it's a start.



Free Template!!
I created a template on Microsoft Publisher and put in some pictures and text about school counselors. I'm not going to lie- it took some time to get everything right in the template! Feel free to use this template to create your own never ending cards! Just follow the folding directions from the blog I mentioned earlier.



Other Possibilities

• Calm-Down skills
• Problem solving
• Affirmations
• Information for teachers
• Mini books/ social stories

What else would you use the Never Ending Cards for??

Technology for School Counselors

We are living in a technology-infused world. For the counselors and educators out there who have embraced the many benefits of using technology in the schools, the possibilities are truly endless!
Below are just a few of the possible ways that school counselors can use technology to make their school counseling program more efficient and more beneficial for the entire school! 


Counselor Organization

• Google calendar- scheduling at a glance
• Google docs- surveys and forms, share documents, spreadsheets
• Individual Notes- (careful to ensure student confidentiality!)
• Keep track of parent contacts
• create charts and graphs for accountability 
• Dropbox- Instead of filing cabinets full of papers, keep resources at the click of a button!

Individual/Group counseling

• Minute Meetings using Ipad
• Check-ins using google forms
• Ipad apps for relaxation, ADHD, character education, emotions, problem solving, etc. This site has some great links: Korea International School - Elementary Counseling

Classroom Guidance

• Smartboard activities- 
• text your answer- http://www.polleverywhere.com/
• youtube videos
• http://edudemic.com/2012/08/50-education-technology-tools-every-teacher-should-know-about/
• Career exploration- O*Net, Bridges, Paws in Jobland, Career Cruiser, Career Webquest
• Powerpoint or Prezi presentations
• Wordle.net - great for lesson summaries, brainstorming, character building, compliments, and so much more! See my lesson with Wordles here
• Classroom timers

School-wide

• Survey teachers, parents, and students using Survey Monkey
• Pinterest- sharing ideas with teachers through community boards (see my post about Pinterest here!)
• Facebook- keep parents in the loop
• Generate QR codes for quick access to information with smart phones
• Edmodo- Social Networking designed for schools 

Other

• Posts related to technology on The Inspired Counselor
• Convert PDF's to Word- http://www.pdftoword.com/
• Keep up-to-date with the latest research-based interventions with sites like Intervention Central
• create newsletters, flyers, and other documents
• Doodle.com- online scheduling tool that can be used quickly and easily to find a date and time to meet with multiple people
• Professional Development- such as the ASCA webinars
• http://voicethread.com/ 
• http://www.kerpoof.com/ 
• Connect with and learn from other school counselors- https://schoolcounselor.org/scene

Career Exploration Lessons- Webquest

This month we have been focusing on careers. I wanted to do some type of self-exploration activity with the students where they learn a bit about themselves and find careers that match their interests/personality. Initially, I was hoping to find a webquest of sorts for the students to explore, but was not able to find anything age appropriate that I liked. There were a few great websites, but none that had everything I was wanting to cover. Instead, I decided to create my own mini-webquest. I have included powerpoint presentations that I have created, as well as a worksheet to go along with the websites. All of the links are listed below. I hope that other school counselors will be able to use some of these resources to help your students explore careers!

Lesson 1: Introduction to Careers- why people choose career (30-45 minutes)

PowerPoint Presentation

On day one talking about careers, we discussed the definition of a "cluster" (relating it back to the career clusters), discussed why adults work, and how they choose their jobs. The students then created a story by entering a few words about what they like or enjoy doing, using this site. Below is a sample story made by this site! There is also a printable story where students just write in the words.

 Lesson 2: Career Exploration (45-60 min.)

PowerPoint Presentation

Each student received a worksheet to guide them through this "webquest". As a review of the previous lesson about choosing careers based on interests and personality, the students started by learning their "Holland Code" by using this quick assessment from GetReadyforCollege.org. In this assessment, students simply check the box next to the things that interest them. Once they submit, they are given a score for each of the 6 Holland Codes. After students have learned what their Holland Code is, we discussed as a class what each one meant, and what kinds of careers people with those personalities would typically like. 

Next, students searched using Paws In Jobland for jobs related to their interests. They were to choose three jobs that are most interesting to them, and write down why they would be a good fit for those jobs, based on interests/personalities. 

Once a teacher verified that they had completed the search site, they could go to VA Career View to explore more careers through games and activities.  

Career Links:

Lesson 1:

• PowerPoint: https://www.dropbox.com/s/njom09fctjsp5w8/Career%20when%20i%20grow%20up%20story.pptx
• I Believe in Me online story: http://www.ibelieveinme.org/WIGU/ideaApplication.html
• I Believe in Me PDF story: http://www.ibelieveinme.org/Resource/When%20I%20Grow%20Up.pdf

Lesson 2:

• PowerPoint: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ijgz6o7s5ya00s/Career%20Powerpoint.pptx
• Webquest Worksheet: 
• draft 1:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/5471308mdc3s59t/career%20exploration%20worksheet%20%282%29.docx 
• draft 2:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbt30xgxtokf35f/career%20exploration%20worksheet%20%281%29.docx 
• Holland Code Personality Assessment: http://www.getreadyforcollege.org/sPagesGR/interestAssessment.cfm
• Paws In Jobland: http://paws.bridges.com/cfnc1.htm 
• VA Career View: http://vacareerview.org/k5/play-it/career-town/main.cfm 

Bullying Wordles

After four weeks of lessons about bullying, we headed to the computer lab to create some "Wordles" to sum everything up. 

We began by briefly going over some of the important terms that we have learned and other things that we have talked about during lessons. For example, we talked about what bullying is: MOO- Mean, On purpose, and Ongoing. We talked about how to handle bullying: HA HA SO- Help, Assert yourself, Humor, Avoid, Self-talk, Own it. We talked about the role of the bystander using the book "say something".  Students were encouraged to come up with 20 unique words from the things that we had talked about over the last several weeks. 

Below is the bulletin board they were displayed on! 

Make your own Wordle here: www.wordle.com