New Students Group

I have around 13 (out of 122) new students to the district this year on my 7th grade team.  I have started a new students group that runs once a week during lunch time.  As we all know, lunch is short.  For us, it is only 20 minutes.  By the time the kiddos get their lunch and come up to my room, we have 15 minutes to complete some meaningful stuff ... and that is if they remember to come! Some of my groups are so good and show up religiously.  This group is driving me nuts because 4 out of the 13 remember each week.  I have passes made for them and have their homeroom teacher or lunch block teacher remind them.  This is an issue I need to address; however, not the purpose of this post. 

Today we did a lesson on comfort zones.  I adapted this lesson from Raising Student Aspirations: Classroom Activities for Grades 9-12  by Russell J. Quaglia and Kristine M. Fox and made it my own and appropriate for 7th graders.

(Comfort Zones - Counselor's Room)

The overall concept of the lesson is for the students to recognize what activities or situations are in their comfort zone, challenge zone or panic zone.  Once all the students have individually completed their zone sheet, they went up to my white board to share.  It was eye-opening for the students to see that some activities and situations were in a comfort zone for some, while in a challenge zone or panic zone for others (see below).  What we really went into detail about was which zone each felt when coming to a new school.  As you can see, everyone's comfort zone was different! The students shared why and how they could move an activity or situation down a zone.  Insightful lesson that went smoothly (regardless of attendance) !!! Feeling accomplished today :)