November Counselor's Corner
at Elizabeth Vaughan Elementary School
Overview of Lessons
Each grade level learned about different topics the month of November. See below for the specifics!
Kindergarten
This month, Kindergarten learned about Personal Space with the book "Personal Space Camp" by Julia Cook. We read the book and practiced having personal space in line, on the carpet, and when doing gonoodle.
1st Grade
1st grade learned the difference between Tattling and Telling/Reporting. We read the book "A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue" by Julia Cook and then students got to practice deciding if situations were tattling or telling.
Tattling: when you want to get someone in trouble, didn't try to solve problem first, told at an inappropriate time
Telling/Reporting: when someone is in danger or being hurt
2nd Grade
2nd Grade focused on Teamwork for their two lessons in November. For their first lesson, we talked about what team work is, why it's important, what good team work looks like, and what can get in the way of good teamwork. We also watched a video showing 3 types of teamwork and students decided what went well and what didn't. That lesson ended with a teamwork activity involving collaborative art work. Each group was given one piece of paper and they decided as a group what they would draw. The different drawings were displayed on the bulletin board this month! For their second lesson on teamwork we reviewed good teamwork steps and then students were broken up into groups of 3-4 to create towers using dry spaghetti noodles and mini marshmallows. Each group was given 15 dry spaghetti noodles and 20 mini marshmallows. They had to create a plan and decide what each member would do before getting their materials. The only goal we had for the towers was to use good teamwork and each class did an amazing job!
Type of Teamwork
3rd Grade
In 3rd grade we learned about 3 parts of the brain that relate to making decisions and emotions. The three parts of the brain we learned about were the amygdala (security guard), hippo-campus (saver of memories), and the prefrontal cortex (wise leader). See the attached powerpoint below to learn more information! There is also a link to the video we watched that also explains how these parts of the brain work together. In January, we are going to go into how to calm down the amygdala!
Why Do We Lose Control of Our Emotions?
4th Grade
4th Grade began learning about empathy. Before learning what empathy is, students first looked at Perspective Art to understand how to look at something from another perspective. They then learned that empathy is the ability to understand someone else's feelings. See our empathy powerpoint below for the different art we looked at and more information about empathy. In the next lesson, students practiced having empathy. Students were placed in groups and were given a pair of shoes that each had their own character story. The group had to answer questions to help understand how that person was feeling and then how they would help that person if they knew them.
5th Grade
In 5th grade we were able to go to the computer lab to learn about Middle School Specialty programs. See the power point below to learn more about them!