One thing you will inevitably learn as a School Psychologist: as much as you can plan for things, sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
I mentioned in this post that I like to have a “bank” of activities that I can modify for any topic, and “go to” when I don’t have time to plan, when it’s a fun day before vacation, or when we just need a break! So, for example, if I’m doing a Zones of Regulation group, we’ll play suction ball and answer questions about the Zones. If we’re doing size of a problem, we’ll pop problem cards and respond how big they are. Kids think this is SO MUCH FUN.
One time when I try to prep these activities is the beginning of the school year. There are a few times during the year when I do a “theme” with all my kids…generally the beginning and end. I encourage you to plan out an activity that you can do with all of your students in the first sessions, and modify as nessesary. We’ll be doing one of these after reviewing expected behaviors in mine!
I’ll tyically pick the activity (suction ball, Jenga, ball poppers) ahead of time to avoid any conflict, and then the set of questions we are doing. In this TPT resource, I have 20 questions that are perfect for the start of the school year in Back to School, GEneral Questions, and “Would You Rather?”. I’ll probably use the general ones for my younger kiddos, the Back to School for most groups, and the “Would You Rather?” for kids that I already know well.
I have a sample of these question cards in my Keep Calm Freebies section that also outlines some of the games I play with them. Enjoy! What is your favorite back to school activity?
Hi! Thank you so much for your resources and ideas- they’re great and I can’t wait to try them out this year with my kids! Just wondering- what is the suction ball game? And what does “pop cards” mean, anything in particular? Thank you!!
Hi Laura. Thanks! https://www.thecalmcorner.com/2018/12/material-share-monday-5-games-you-can-adapt-for-any-theme.html
You can see how I set up the suction ball game there. I got the balls in the Target party favor section. Basically I write numbers (usually) on the board, and students though the ball at the whiteboard and answer whichever one sticks! I’ve also used the balls in the same manner and just drawn faces on the board and kids have to talk about a time they felt that way, etc. I have one of the poppers I use in this post. https://www.thecalmcorner.com/2019/07/school-psychologist-reccomendations-my-favorite-books-supplies-tools.html -basically same concept. I use large binder clips to stand up number cards, emotion cards, size of problem cards, etc. Then kids use the poppers to knock down the cards, and whichever one they knock down is the one thy have to answer!
Thank you so much!