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Face Cards for Emotional Awareness
119 Activities for Understanding Yourself and Others
By Tad Vogl
How often as school counselors are we able to work with children in group where their emotions, thoughts and connections are done with cards? Tad Vogl focused on the perspective that face cards easily assist students in talking about their emotions without having to fully describe their feelings. After all, a face card says a lot!
Face Cards for Emotional Awareness is a compilation of activities to be used with a deck of cards. The deck has 25 cards with different facial expressions. In addition, the user has access to two cards that are blank to use creatively throughout the group activities. The picture cards are user-friendly and express emotions of what children would consider an “imaginary friend”.
The author’s goal in the set of group activities is for the school counselor to work with students on themes of reflection, prediction, empathy, and cooperation. The use of cards allows the participant to branch out from the selected facial expression when discussing the themes listed. Lessons have a level of flexibility that can be tailored to different grade levels as deemed appropriate.
Lessons begin with the participants going through developmental activities that allow them to reflect on themselves. As the activities move forward, participants begin to work on how to relate to others and how to relate these lessons to the “real world” once the student has left the school environment. The author finalizes the book with activities on how to build a team approach as well as identifying other challenges students will encounter. Such challenges include relating to athletic team members or community service activities.
This book is a good resource with different activities that can be replicated in a classroom setting. The lessons relate to social and emotional development of students as well a s with character education initiatives of schools. A great book to add to a school counselors’ library!
Taking Part
Introducing Social Skills to Children – PreK to Grade 3
By Gwendolyn Cartledge and James Kleefeld
Taking Part by Cartledge and Kleefeld is a resource that effectively shows the need for lessons at the elementary level that introduces children to social skills. Certainly the authors had this book in mind to support the work of Elementary School Counselors who are challenged by the social and emotional skill development of their students.
The theoretical model behind this book focuses on teaching social skills through classroom lessons through defining the behavior, assessing the students’ understanding of their behavior, presenting examples to change current behavior, and provide opportunities for practice. Taking Part is an excellent set of lessons that can be incorporated into a comprehensive school counseling program as it also looks at the effectiveness of the curriculum through the changes of students’ behaviors.
The authors present a developmental approach to the set of lessons. Lessons are grouped into six units where the school counselor can utilize puppets or posters to present the material. Units begin with the idea of making conversation and getting children to talk to one another as well as learning listening skills. Units that follow include communicating feelings, expressing oneself positively, cooperating with peers, team building and conflict resolution. Subcomponents of the units engage students in controlling temper, speaking kindly, sharing materials, and helping others among a variety of themes.
Each lesson incorporates a story of animals relating to one another. Students practice by role playing how their animal character could react differently to the given situation presented. Taking Part provides a checklist for school counselors and other teachers to assess how students are engaging in practice of the taught skill. In addition, the book also provides several posters and worksheets that can be reproduced to use in the lessons.
Taking Part is an excellent resource for elementary school counselors as well as middle level school counselors. The book provides school counselors with curriculum that can be collaborated with teachers in the delivery method. Skills learned at an early age can assist children in better connections in their environment.
Title: Thinking, Feeling,
Behaving: An Emotional Educational Curriculum (Grades 1-12)
(Research Press)
www.researchpress.com
Author: Ann Vernon
In thinking about how best
to address emotional and social issues, motivation and engage
students in a process of reflection, Ann Vernon has developed a
curriculum that provides school counselors with lessons on all
different facets of social and emotional barriers. Thinking,
Feeling, Behaving is developmentally appropriate for
students beginning in 1st grade through 12th
grade. The book is a compilation of lessons divided into
subcategories as defined by self acceptance, beliefs and
behavior, problem solving and interpersonal relationships.
Thinking, Feeling,
Behaving is based on the Rational
Emotive Theory by Albert Ellis. The goal of this curriculum is
to provide lessons related to emotional health of students as
well as engage students in problem solving techniques that can
provide different outcomes and changes in behaviors. Lessons
are personalized and sequential. Students are guided through a
process of understanding consequences to current behaviors and
how to find alternate outcomes with positive reinforcements. In
other words, what are the irrational beliefs, how does one
dispute them and how do they become rational?
The author provides actual
scenarios that students can understand and relate to. The
lessons include high order thinking questions that provoke
discussions. In addition, the author includes “me” type
questions where the student must think of similar circumstances
and personalize the situation in order to best understand
outcomes. Worksheets are included to assist school counselors
on delivering the curriculum, but also to have students reflect
privately.
The curriculum embraces the
goal of positive behavior and flexible thinking. Topics
presented in the lessons reflect peer perception, cliques,
transition issues, and social pressures. The author has also
included different techniques such as imagery and collaborative
discussions to get students to become critical thinkers in the
field of problem solving. School counselors would need to
create formats of evaluating the lesson’s effectiveness as an
additional tool for a program. Overall, this is a great
resource for school counselors and certainly an additional
resource to a comprehensive program.
Book Review by Deborah Hardy
Title:
Essential ProTeen (Research
Press)
www.researchpress.com
Author:
Mia Sharon Adler
The Essential ProTeen
program developed by Mia Adler combines a Facilitator’s Manual
as well as a Student Journal in its delivery of a curriculum
embracing the personal and social skill development of
adolescents. Based on the author’s experience of understanding
the self, The Essential ProTeen is a user friendly
curriculum that can be utilized in collaboration with content
teachers such as English, Health and Physical Education or in a
group context.
The curriculum is divided
into five unit lessons under the topics of goals, motivation,
opportunity and decision making, know yourself and change. Each
unit focuses on how the topic connects with the student’s
personal development and success in academics and life. The
idea of the lessons is to assist students in feeling empowered
to make the right choices, find a supportive environment to
assist with barriers and reflect on their journey.
Each unit provides clear
samples of lesson plans for the facilitator. Lessons are broken
down into objectives that are understandable as well as
guidelines for the facilitator to engage students in
discussions. Lessons begin with definition of key terms as
related to the topic for students to begin reflecting on
meaning, literally and personally. Lessons include exercises
for students to complete with sample scenarios. The topics are
connected to careers and applications to real life experiences.
The Essential ProTeen
curriculum is a comprehensive program in that it includes
surveys for facilitators as well as participants. Facilitators
are asked to respond to questions regarding the implementation
of the program and its delivery format so changes and
adjustments can be made as well as observations of the
effectiveness of the topics. Students and parents are provided
with pre and post surveys to give insight into the effectiveness
of the program. These tools provide a format to measure how
students succeed because of a support staff program. Finally,
the curriculum offers the suggestion of a Peer Mentoring program
to continue the connections for students as they implement the
newly developed social and personal skills.
It
is a great resource for school counselors to have in their
libraries!
Book review by Deborah Hardy
Title:
Enhancing Academic Motivation
Author:
Norman Brier
Enhancing Academic
Motivation, by Norman Brier, provides
school counselors with a blueprint of lesson plans to assist
students in obtaining a better concept of education, a purpose
for learning and a personal growth in responsibility.
The book is composed of
sixteen lesson plans in sequential order, easy to follow guide
and review that provides school counselors to revisit their
progress with students. The author defines motivation, provides
a clear understanding of how students engage in learning and the
importance of meaning in what is learned. Student reactions and
reasons for not wanting to learn are provided to assist the
school counselor.
Overall Enhancing
Academic Motivation is a wonderful resource for school
counselors planning to provide lessons in class or group
delivery system on issues related to academic motivation. The
plan focuses on students as individuals, but lessons are geared
towards personal and social skill domain as well as academics.
The author provides an appendix with forms and tips for parents
to become participants in their child’s motivation development
and success. A great book to include in your library!! |
