February Newsletter

Here is the newsletter I put out to my Freshmen/Sophomore students and families for February.  It is packed with information about this month's course registration for next year, top 10 Freshmen/Sophomore mistakes, and the reasons to begin a College List now.  Click on the photo to see the newsletter:








Once registration is over, I'll have time to post highlights of this month's High School Advisory lessons!

Film Clips Lessons Made Easier!

While searching for advisory lessons, I stumbled across this FREE resource for lessons using youtube/ short videos: The Source for Youth Ministry.   Each lesson includes a link to a short on-line video and then a list of discussions questions.  Yes, because these lessons were created for Youth Ministry, they all relate to a Bible story.  Therefore it IS necessary to edit the lessons to make them appropriate for a public school.  This is NOT difficult to do.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to find this website.  Our advisory theme on Fridays is Film Clips.  This entire year I have been scouring the internet trying to find clips that I could turn into teen-related life lessons.  This site is going to make my life so much easier- which I especially need right now during Course Registration time!
So check it out.  Here is one of the lessons I adapted from their site about Inward Beauty using Dove's Real Beauty Sketches:  Forensic Self-Image (click on the image below for the lesson.)

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:
  

January Counseling Newsletter for Freshmen and Sophomores

At the end of last week I sent out my January Newsletter for Freshmen and Sophomores.  Since I recently went over PSAT results with my students, I focused a portion of the newsletter on student questions about high school testing.  The other major portion of the newsletter was dedicated to the many opportunities in North Carolina available to my students with upcoming deadlines.  Here is a copy of my newsletter for those of you who are looking for ideas:

January Newsletter Pg. 1

January Newsletter Pg 2

Happy New Year!

After a couple of weeks off (and fighting colds the entire time), I'm back to work with lots to do!  Here are some of this week's High School Advisory Lessons:

A Lesson on goal setting called:  Looking Back/Look Ahead:

January, with the semester change and the new year, is an obvious time of year to think about goals and focus on a plan of action.  I found this lesson from East High School and adapted it to meet the needs of my school. 

Your Turn To Lead:
OK.  I stumbled across this idea while googling team building activities:  have advisory groups create and implement a team building activity in other advisory groups.  I quickly realized that this met a number of my goals:
1) building of leadership skills
2) building relationships BETWEEN advisory groups
3) creating FUN activities related back to our school's mission
and
4) Students doing MOST of the planning.
Genius, right?  Well. I will know for sure by the end of this month.  Listed below is the lesson plan I created for getting groups started.  They had about 3 group meetings to plan their lesson/activity.

Beginning next week, my first couple of groups will begin presenting their activities.  That is when I will really know if this idea works.  I am planning to make this into a competition.  Our students LOVE a health competition!  I will have teachers evaluate the student leaders and I will have the student leaders evaluate the student participants.  Here is a copy of the student leader evaluation:

I did the evaluation as a Google Doc form, so that I will be able to easily collect the data for the winning advisory group!

Rules For Being  Human:  This is a four minute video is based off the book "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules" by Cherie Carter-Scott. 

 After watching the video, students were asked to reflect on the rules and how they apply to their own lives.  Students are then encouraged to write their own rules for life.  I found this idea over at Middle School Advisory 101.  Check out her blog for a variety of great Advisory lessons.

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.  

November Newsletter

Here is this month's parent/student newsletter for Freshman and Sophomore parents.  I have struggled with deciding "what" to put in each newsletter.  For those of you who are also starting monthly newsletters, I thought I would elaborate on what I hope will be my "regular" sections.
One idea came from my student meetings.  At my Freshman and Sophomore meetings I made students fill out an "exit ticket" where they wrote down questions they had regarding graduation, GPA, testing, college, etc.  I now use those exit tickets to create a column in each newsletter titled:  Student Questions and Answers. Each month I try to focus on a different category of questions.  This month I focused on GPA questions.
In addition, I almost always include some sort of college prep time line.  I often use www.collegemapper.com as a resource for this section.  They always have unique ideas and suggestions as well as the usual, "keep your grade up; visit colleges."  What resources do you use for keeping your students and parent informed?  Leave your suggestions in the comments section.
Another section I have begun to include came to me after talking to a recent high school graduate.  As a current college athlete, he stated that he wished someone had told him in high school to begin taping his games.  I included that tip in last month's newsletter, but have started to include a section on what to do NOW if you have specific college goals.  This month's section is on planning to go to Art School.
As always, I am looking for new and unique additions, so feel free to share your newsletters, ideas, and resources.  Working together, we can help our students, and perhaps make that job a bit easier!