Guidance Lessons

Guidance lessons are a critical part of the school counseling curriculum and can cover a variety of topics at the K-12 level. Guidance lessons address content across the academic, career and personal/social spectrum.

BRIEF SUMMARY

Guidance lessons are a critical part of the school counseling curriculum and can cover a variety of topics at the K-12 level. Guidance lessons address content across the academic, career and personal/social spectrum. These lessons are provided in classroom settings and reach many students at once. Guidance lessons are designed to be preventative in nature, teaching students skills they need to grow and develop in the academic, career and personal/social arenas.

KEY POINTS

• Provided in classroom settings.
• Designed to reach many students at once.
• Preventative in nature; teaching students necessary skills they need to grow and develop.
• Can use a variety of formats, small group work, presentation or lecture style, can include co-presenters and guest speakers.
• Good way to incorporate different media into lessons.

RESOURCES

• Indiana School Counselor Submitted Lesson Plans – Elementary/Intermediate School
• Indiana School Counselor Submitted Lesson Plans – Middle/Junior High School
• Indiana School Counselor Submitted Lesson Plans – High School
• Grades 5-8 Guidance Lessons from the West Virginia Department of Education
• K-12 Social & Emotional Development Lesson Plans from the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
• K-12 Academic Development Lesson Plans from the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
• K-12 Career Development Lesson Plans from the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
• K-12 Guidance & Counseling Units: Academic, Career and Personal & Social Development from the Missouri Center for Career Education
• K-12 Guidance Counseling Curriculum from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
• Middle School Guidance Lessons from Fargo Public Schools
• K-12 Free Guidance Lessons from Teachers Pay Teachers

SHARED WISDOM

• (Added 4/9/24, CounselorTalk): How do West Texas cattle ranchers protect their herds from mountain lions and locoweed? How do stand-up comedians handle it when they are bombing onstage? How do turnaround consultants parachute into a company on the brink of disaster and diagnose what’s wrong with it — in a few weeks time?Learn the answers — and enjoy a bountiful collection of other fascinating details — on the last 4 episodes of my podcast, What It’s Like To Be… We’ve had an absolutely killer* run of guests:
  • A Stand-Up Comedian: Where do jokes come from and how do you know when fresh insights have comic potential?
  • A Nurse: How do you handle the heartbreak of treating patients with severe burns?
  • A Turnaround Consultant: What’s it like to be the person who has to decide, in a crisis situation, who keeps their job and who doesn’t?
  • A Cattle Rancher: How does it feel to walk the same land — and practice the same trade — that your great-grandparents did?

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