Aha Moment!

As I was reflecting on a Social Thinking Group (stay tuned for more about this)  I met with today, I started thinking about the group dynamics and everyone's participation, or lack thereof. I have one student who rarely talks about his difficulties and I am having a hard time figuring out if he truly doesn't see how his actions affect others or if he is just embarrassed to talk about it in front of the group (who have NO problem talking about themselves). So I got to thinking about how I could get into his brain.

I am having teachers complete rating scales about these students. I talked about this in the post, Counseling Group Effectiveness. My Duh Aha moment came when I thought about the students doing the same rating scale but as a self-assessment.  I changed the wording a bit and voila, a self-assessment! I have a few chrome books and iPads in my room so I am going to have the students do the the quick Google Form before we start the group each session.  I will be able to gauge how they view their own behavior compared to the teacher's point of view.  Plus, I will have some talking points at each of our sessions that are specific to each student. I will be the only person who will see the results so hopefully I can get them to be completely honest.

I have a younger group working on self-control and school skills that I thought I could do the same thing only simplify the language on the form.  I have a picture of both self-assessments below.

If you have any great ways that you are using Google Docs, please share!

~Emily

Counseling Group Effectiveness

In an effort to become more strategic and effective with my groups, I have created a questionnaire using Google Forms for teachers to complete.  Three times per week, teachers will score their students using a rating scale.  I can now track how my students are doing "generalizing" the skills I have taught them.  Below is a screen shot of one of my questionnaires. When the info is sent to the spreadsheet, I can quickly see the kiddos who are "getting it" and those who need more support. I can also determine which area I need to work on the most. I use the data as criteria for graduation from the group. Plus, having data during meetings is a bonus!

We use Microsoft Outlook so I created an invite, copied and pasted the link inside and set a reminder. A reminder pops up for the teachers at the end of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  All they have to do is click the link and complete the 4 question survey.  Easy Peasy!

Namaste'

I have been using yoga a lot this year with a wide variety of students. The benefits are wonderful. Not only are you teaching valuable skills, like calming, but you are making students aware of their bodies. I particularly like using it with my counseling groups that are focused on self-control. It takes self-control when you are doing yoga to do the poses correctly.

I found a site that has a huge array of yoga videos (and other movement videos). The videos can be using to energize the tired kiddos and calm the energized ones.  Click on the link below to check it out!

Go Noodle