Advisory: Week of January 13

This week our school celebrated Health and Wellness week.  I was asked to create lessons in advisory that would tie into this theme.  With the help of the middle school counselor, we created a few activities that will hopefully spur some discussion about health and wellness and are fun too!  Check out these lessons:

• At our school, we sometimes pair up our middle and high school advisory groups into what we call our "School Families".  On Tuesday, we asked for our "families" to get together and complete this Zumba lesson plan:

BOND WITH YOUR MIDDLE SCHOOL FAMILY! "Physical wellness" involves understanding and appreciating the relationship between sound nutrition and how the body performs.  It requires participation in regular physical activities that improve cardiovascular strength and endurance, flexibility, and muscular strength. "Social wellness" is the ability to relate to and connect with other people. "Emotional wellness" is the awareness and acceptance of our own feelings and the feelings of others.  It’s the ability to acknowledge and share feelings of anger, stress, sadness, or fear, as well as joy, happiness, hope, and love.   Combine these three areas of wellness by inviting your Middle School Family to join you as you all try your best to keep up with this Zumba fitness routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa2IWYs3ags   Remember this is about having fun, getting exercise, and bonding!  Laughing burns calories too!

• In October, I created a lesson called Lunch Scholars which is an adaption of Jay Leno's Jaywalking.  My high school students LOVED this activity, so I decided to create something similar specific to Health and Wellness IQ:

Wellness Week Trivia:  How much do you know about Health and Wellness?  Click on the presentation below to watch a quick Jay Leno video and then try your hand at Wellness Trivia!  

• Our Friday theme is "Film Clips".  I found a great lesson from PBS Learning about Prescription Drug abuse and adapted the lesson to meet the needs of my school advisory.  Click on the lesson below to see what I sent out to my advisors:
  

Where Did December Go?

Yikes!  With the rush of the Holidays, I somehow forgot to post about all my December happenings.  For starters, I put out my December Newsletter- this time focusing on Internet Resources for Career/College planning, ideas for those who hope to apply to Ivy League schools, and Q & A on Transcripts.  Again, feel free to share you ideas for making Career/College Prep newsletters easier!

Also this month, we received our Sophomores' Act PLAN results.  I was encouraged by a colleague to teach a brief class to the students on how to read those reports.  After some hesitation due to time constraints, I decided to give it a try and I am SOOOO glad that I did.  While it took most of an entire day, I was able to meet with ALL of my 10th grade students and answer their questions.  I love having the opportunity to put a name with a face, talk about career interests, and help them plan for the future.  It is a reward to see the "light bulb" go on over their heads.  Here is the presentation I used to present my lesson on the ACT Plan score report (adapted from http://www.act.org/plan/downloads.html):

As for December Advisory time, here are my favorite lessons that I either created, found, or adapted.  Hope these help someone else there!

December 12:  Lesson on Learning Styles and Studying for Mid-terms:  

December 5:  Who Gets Accepted (a great lesson on college admissions from college board):

December 6:  Story Corps (a lesson with a video that: 1) teaches that everyone has a story, 2) teaches the importance of listening, 3) teaches how to conduct an interview and/or how to be interviewed, and builds relationships within the Advisory group.)  The Story Corp website is filled with a variety of short interviews and animations on a variety of topics.  

A lesson on Writing a Letter

I am sure most of you would be surprised to find a High School Counselor creating a lesson on "How to Write a Letter/Address an Envelope".  Yeah.  Me too.  However, it became obvious that out high school students needed a "refresher" on this life skill... and since it was going to be taught during advisory, the lesson fell to me.  The middle school counselor and I decided to tie this life skill into our recent K-12 Activity Day to give "purpose" to the lesson.  So after searching Prezi and after a lot of tweaking, here is the lesson I created (click on the photo):