Listening and Good Communication/Student Council Elections and No Place for Hate Coalition

This week I was in some 2nd grade classrooms and all 4th and 5th grade classrooms. In 4th and 5th grade we learned about how to be clear when we get and receive directions by being specific, checking for understanding, using our best listening skills, etc. Who better to teach us about communication than Amelia Bedelia! ;-) If you know anything about Amelia Bedelia, you know she mixes up a lot of things and takes everything very literally. We read Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping and talked about how both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, and Amelia Bedelia could have all communicated better so things didn't get mixed up all the time. The students came up with great answers, such as checking for  understanding, asking questions, showing how you want something done, teaching her how to do something, being very specific, not using so many expressions, correcting her mistakes instead of just getting angry and frustrated, and really tuning in and being a good listener when communicating with someone.

Once we finished the story, I had the students get a little taste of what's it like to have to really tune in and just listen to directions without seeing an example, or being shown what to do. I read them nine steps to draw a picture and I only repeated each direction two times, and did not specify anything beyond what I read. Here were the directions and the what the final product should have looked like: 

Ask your children in 4th and 5th grades to show or tell you what their picture looked like. Ask them to tell you why everyone's looked different and some had some mistakes. Nobody's looked exactly, 100% like mine and all were different sizes. Ask them why. 

In addition to a busy week with guidance lessons and my individual counseling sessions, we also had an exciting week with the Student Council Elections and selecting the members of our No Place for Hate Coalition! The kids running for Student Council Office all did such an amazing job on their speeches this morning!! I know everyone had a tough time voting!! Here they are getting ready to give their speeches this morning! 

 
 











Congratulations to our winners for Student Council Office: President- Campbell, Vice President- Brini, Secretary- Kelly, and Treasurer- Audrey

No Place for Hate Coalition members were decided based on the applications they filled out at school. Mayra Rosales, our part-time school counselor selected eight applications with answers that she thought were the best fit for our NPFH coalition. Names were covered up, so she didn't know who each application belonged to and it also helped that she doesn't know most of the kids yet anyway, since she is new this year. This made it completely bias-free and fair for everyone. The competition was extremely tough for this and we had many applications to sift through. Once she had the eight selected, I looked at them as well and definitely agreed they would be great NPFH members.

We congratulate our 5th grade members: Taymour, Preston, Brooke, and Sophie

We also congratulate our 4th grade members: Hector, Enrique, Haylee, and Hannah

It's going to be a great year in NPFH and Student Council! I am excited to get our meetings going and helping to make Oak Hill an even better place than it already is!!

Have a great weekend! :-)