Share a Resource Sunday
Hello, Savvy Friends!
Today, I’d like to share a couple of resources with you that I received from Free Spirit Publishing. Both are written by Sue Graves. The two books are part of the “Our Emotions and Behavior” series which has a total of twelve books.
I Don’t Want to Wait! is a book about being patient, and Why Should I? is a book about respect. One thing that I love about both of the books is the diversity of the families and characters in the illustrations. Both books are good for, and were intended to be used with, individual students or small groups. This is not to say you can’t use them as part of your school counseling lessons.
Sometime during the second semester of school, I suggested my counseling partner use I Don’t Want to Wait! with a student she was seeing regularly. The student displayed very similar behaviors as the main character, Maisy. Maisy had a hard time with patience and many times she would get angry when things didn’t happen when she wanted them to. Because of her impatience, she often frustrated her teacher and classmates. She would interrupt them when they didn’t talk fast enough for her or if she had to wait in line with them. She also didn’t always follow the directions her teacher gave. One day, after she had stomped off impatiently, she decided to talk about it with her big sister Lola. Lola gave Maisy a strategy to try that she often used herself. She told Maisy to take a deep breath and think about other things instead of dwelling on the thing that made her feel frustrated and impatient. As the story continues, Maisy is confronted with her impatience yet again. But, this time, she uses her new strategy and sees how it works. Her patience also earns her an extra treat!
The second book, Why Should I?, is one I’m sure will be a go-to resource for individual counseling sessions about respect. This book drives home the phrase – Treat others the way you want to be treated. Arin, the main character in the story, doesn’t realize his behaviors are disrespectful until he makes others upset with him. He is careless with things that belong to others, and he doesn’t respect other people’s space. He’s even careless with his own belongings and doesn’t put things where they belong which leaves a big mess in his room. Arin is also rude to his classmate Junior when he doesn’t respect his opinion. He even laughs at him, and that upsets Junior. After a rough day at school, his teacher tells him he needs to think about his behavior. Arin asks his grandma for help. His grandma helps him to think about how HE would feel if any of the things he does happened to him. Arin takes the conversation to heart and makes an effort to change. He even apologizes to the people he upset. As he treats others with respect, he notices that everyone else treats him better too!
Both books have a picture story at the end with a different scenario from the original story. Each shows what can happen when the character doesn’t use the behavior taught in the book and what happens when they do use it. Each book also has notes about sharing the book which includes and explanation of the picture story, ideas about what to do before reading the story, and things to do after reading it. The interest level for the book is ages 4-8. My school counseling partner used I Don’t Want to Wait! with a first grader which is the target reading level for the series. A few of the other subjects addressed in the series are anger, worry, and telling the truth. These books can be great to pull from for individual student concerns. I like that the picture stories give children the opportunity to tell a story in their own words. This helps the school counselor, or whoever is using the book, to see how much the student understands the behavior being addressed.
I will share another Free Spirit book next Sunday and one more the following Sunday, so be on the lookout for those!
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