265. Planning Counseling Lessons

Welcome back to another episode of School Counseling Simplified! All throughout September, we’re diving into classroom lessons, one of my favorite tier 1 interventions. While some schools provide ready-made lessons, there are many times you’ll need to design and plan them yourself. That’s why I’m excited to share tips on how to schedule, plan, and teach effective lessons. These strategies come straight from my Stress-Free Class Lessons Course, a five-module resource designed to help you feel confident and prepared.

In today’s episode, we’re continuing the conversation by focusing on planning your counseling lessons—deciding what to teach and how to teach it. This is a sneak peek into Module 2 of my course.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Planning lessons for the year: how to select topics, incorporate seasonal and school-wide themes, and repurpose content across grade levels.
  
  

• Using the calendar: align lessons with holidays, seasons, or events (for example, starting the year with a “Meet the Counselor” lesson, or teaching about kindness and friendship around Valentine’s Day).
  
  

• Referencing data and needs: review referrals, attendance data, and input from administrators to identify student challenges and plan preventative lessons.
  
  

• Combining curriculum resources: integrate any curriculum your school provides with your own lessons to fill in gaps.
  
  

• Book-based lessons: choose books with strong themes and build lessons around them, while ensuring teachers have access to reinforce concepts.
  
  

We’ll also talk about offering “as-needed” lessons when extra support is required, such as teaching a cybersafety lesson to a class that needed immediate guidance beyond their regular schedule.

And here’s a planning tip: Don’t reinvent the wheel. You can easily adapt lessons to make them developmentally appropriate across different grade levels.

Your action steps:

• Write down monthly events you’d like to align lessons with
  
  

• Review discipline referrals and student data
  
  

• Prepare your needs assessment
  
  

• Find out if your school provides a curriculum
  
  

• Research books you might want to use in future lessons

Resources Mentioned:

• Join IMPACT

• stressfreeschoolcounseling.com/classlessons

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More About School Counseling Simplified:

School Counseling Simplified is a podcast offering easy to implement strategies for busy school counselors. The host, Rachel Davis from Bright Futures Counseling, shares tips and tricks she has learned from her years of experience as a school counselor both in the US and at an international school in Costa Rica.

You can listen to School Counseling Simplified on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more!