Red Ribbon Week Faculty Survey

Whew! A busy, but successful, week has come to a close.  RRW is a lot of fun and a lot of work!  Over the years, as standardized testing has overshadowed every single thing that happens on our campus, our RRW festivities have dwindled.  It is a very basic celebration which requires nothing more from teachers than passing out red ribbons on Monday, creating a class pledge poster, and dressing up each day for our theme.  It is simple, low stress and every one SEEMS to be enjoying the limited activities.  But as with any program you provide, you never really know how people feel unless you give them an opportunity to tell you, anonymously of course.  The best way to gauge the success of your RRW and your faculty response is to conduct a teacher survey.  Here are two I have used.  One is a paper survey which you can edit as needed and can put in their mailboxes. The other is a Google survey you can send as a link in an email.  Remember, with the Google form you must FIRST make a copy and rename it before sending it to your faculty or you will NOT be able to access your faculty responses.   To copy this form click on the black "edit this form" box.  When you see the gray "editable" version, click on the far left on "File."  Under the "File" drop down menu is "make a copy."  Click on "make a copy," rename your document, click OK and it will be in your Google Drive ready to access and edit and share.  Both the paper survey and Google form may be edited to fit your particular RRW activities and theme dress-up days.

It is sometimes hard to hear what others have to say about an event on which you have worked so hard, especially if there are things that did not go well or were not well received.  However, it is always a good idea to get feedback from your co-workers if you wish to earn/maintain their respect and support for future activities. This is one of the ways we learn and grow and create a program that meets the needs of our school.  So ask for their thoughts and suggestions and be prepared to make some changes for next year if necessary.  Also, make sure to publicly thank them for a great week. Maybe a staff email or morning announcement thanking everyone for their participation. Nothing goes further than an outward expression of gratitude.

I hope you find these tools helpful in assessing your Red Ribbon Week.  I'll be interested to hear what my faculty has to say.

Quick and Easy RRW lesson: Pills vs Candy

I was searching today to update some images in one of my PowerPoints for RRW, when I stumbled across a remarkable find that I just have to share with you! I had been thinking about how much some medicine looks like candy and we had talked about this idea quite a bit in several of my classes.  I was also thinking how awesome it would be if I could create a game where students had to guess which was the medicine and which was the candy.  Well, someone has done that and shared it on-line! No need to re-invent that wheel!  I have taken the link  I found while searching Google images and hyperlinked it in a simple PowerPoint that you can use with your classes.  There are 3 levels of play and it asks you to guess on each screen which item is candy or medicine or poison.  When you click on your answer choice, it tells you if you are right or not and what each item really is.  It also keeps track of your right and wrong guesses and gives you a score at the end.  There is also a Spanish version.

I am really excited to share this new RRW activity with you.  Personally, I was fascinated with the comparisons and think this could be done with any age groups K-12.  There are not many resources out there that can say that. I can't wait to try it with my 1st, 2nd and 4th grade classes tomorrow!

Click on the Pills vs Candy link to download the PowerPoint.

Happy Red Ribbon Week!

Red Ribbon Week lessons

October is one of the busiest months of the year for School Counselors who are trying to do Red Ribbon Week and Bully Prevention all in just 31 days.  Here are two intermediate lessons I have created to teach during the month of October using a variety of information off the web and ideas from the formerly free website, HealthTeacher.com.( now $149 a year)

The first lesson called "Over the Counter and Prescription Medicine" teaches students drugs are powerful chemicals that change the way our bodies work.  These can be good or bad, illegal or legal, prescription or Over-the-Counter (OTC) or street drugs.  This lesson uses thinking maps and Kagan structures to help keep students interested, engaged and focused on the similarities and differences in prescription drugs and over the counter drugs.  I have used this lesson with 3rd, but it could easily be used with 4th, 5th and possibly 6th with some adjustments. Depending on your discussion and use student thinking maps, this could be be two 30-45 minute lessons.  Included here is the PowerPoint and lesson plan.

The next lesson is "What do you know about drugs?"  This lesson is for my older students and I use it only with 5th grade. It is definitely a lesson that could be used with 6th -8th.  You can do this as a PowerPoint  quiz and presentation/discussion, Personal Response Clicker lesson, or as a Kahoot! lesson if you have the technology or allow students to bring their own.   The "What do you know about drugs?" PowerPoint has 15 questions which function as a pre/post test with answer key and information slides at the end of the slide show.  After giving the pre test, have groups teach the class the information about drugs from their slide(s) and maybe something they did not know or was surprising to them.  After sharing, have class take the post test on paper or perhaps do the Kahoot! This lesson can take two 30-45 minutes class sessions depending on the amount of discussion generated from the information slides.  Included here is the PowerPoint and lesson plan. If you have access to technology here is a very similar version (18 questions) of the Powerpoint on Kahoot!  you may want to try this with your students as the pre/post test.  My students always want to play Kahoot! again, so pre/post it is!

My RRW Overview

Prior to Red Ribbon Week I  give teachers an overview of the week and send home our theme and a list of dress up days to parents in English and Spanish. Two weeks before I create a large template that goes with our theme and give one per class for students to decorate and sign as their pledge to practice healthy choices and stay drug free.  These are due to me by Friday before the start of RRW so I can hang them up around the school. (Last year we did "I mustache you to be drug free.")
 After hanging up class pledges, I put ribbons and safety pins in mailboxes for teachers to pass out on Monday.  On the Monday of RRW my 5th grade Leadership students  and any of their parents who would like to help, show up an hour before school to tie red ribbons on all the poles in the parent and bus loop and all the poles outside our classrooms.  (We are  in Florida, we are an "outside" school.) Afterwards, we have a doughnut and juice breakfast before sending them off to class.

Each morning of RRW I have a short message I read on the morning news show about the history of RRW, healthy choices, peer pressure, etc.  These messages are sent to me periodically as a bonus for our purchase of the Project Wisdom program.  Due to the copyright, I am unable to share them here. However, here is a brief summary message I wrote using information off the internet from the Camarena Club to explain the reason Red Ribbon Week was started.

With more standardized testing and Common Core pressure on classroom teachers, I have severely cut back our RRW activities to just the dress up days, wearing ribbons, class pledge, my classroom lessons, and morning messages.  These are about all my faculty can handle and for these I get support.

To me, RRW is all about increasing awareness of using medication correctly and wisely, focusing on healthy choices and lifestyles, and learning to handle peer pressure. RRW is not something for I which we have any school generated data, but we know students who make good choices, lead a healthy life and resist peer pressure are going to do better in school.  Now if I could only figure out how to show that with data!

For more RRW lessons check out this link to  primary and intermediate lessons I have previously shared.

Enjoy your RRW!

Sharing Red Ribbon Week Lessons

Between Red Ribbon Week and Bully Prevention, I think October is one of the busiest months for School Counselors.  Each of these topics are important in the healthy physical and emotional development of our students.  But both in one month?  It is hard to give either topic the spotlight it deserves. The planning and implementing of lessons, programs and activities is time consuming. So, I thought I would share five of my favorite Red Ribbon Week lessons.

For Kindergarten, 1st grade and possibly 2nd grade, I have updated a lesson I did years ago with a PowerPoint presentation.  Even if you don't have access to technology, this lesson can work just fine if you take "safe" and "not safe" objects and place them on a tray or in a shallow basket.  The lesson "Safe or Not Safe?" takes students through a series of slides asking them to name the safe and not safe things to put in their mouth. The safe things of course are easy, it is the "not safe" things that prompt the teachable moments and our discussion. After the slide presentation students are given a variety of pictures and take turns telling the class if the item is safe or not safe to put in their mouth.  I have a cute little tub with a big smiley mouth on it and a little mini garbage can. Students are then asked to put their pictures in the correct place.  Check out the lesson plan and PowerPoint.  I have also included a coloring sheet of unknown origin. My apologies to its author.  It was in a file I inherited and I have no idea who created it.

 Safe things I can put in my mouth.

Unsafe things that will not go in my mouth.

Safe and unsafe clip art

In First Grade (but could also be done with Kindergarten and possibly 2nd grades) I like to focus on "Who can give you medicine?"

This lesson is super easy and requires only a place to brainstorm student ideas (chart paper, chalkboard or white board) and some way for them to then indicate who can and cannot give you medicine.  (I used the die cuts above, but you could use markers or chalk, with an X or + or my pages of  red circle slash and stars clip art)  

 I laminated paper, used the die cut machine and put a magnet on the back.

The lesson is introduced by talking about why we take medicine and what medicine does for us.  I tell the boys and girls we only take medicine from "grown-ups we know and trust"  We repeat this phrase often throughout the lesson. Next we begin preparing for a brainstorming session of who can give us medicine.  To get the ideas flowing about all the people who can give them medicine, we do a brief Kagan structure, Rally Robin, for 1 minute with shoulder partners sharing back and forth.  Afterwards, the students share their ideas and I write them on the board.  And in true brainstorming fashion, I put up ALL the ideas, even the impossible ones like God, Santa, and the dog.  (All individuals they know and trust.)  Once their ideas are shared, I call on the students to come up one at a time to choose a symbol to put next to the name we are talking about. I use the red hands for "stop don't take medicine from this person" and the yellow smiley faces for "grown-ups we know and trust."  As we go through the list of people, I invite the students to participate in why this person can or can not give us medicine.

For 2nd and 3rd grade I have a PowerPoint, "What is medicine?" I created my PowerPoint based on a lesson from HealthTeacher.com, a wonderful website which, unfortunately, is no longer free.  This lesson walks children through information about medicine and introduces the word prescription and who can give these, how they can help you, and how even medicine from a doctor can hurt you if it is not yours. When I do this lesson we stop periodically throughout the lesson for partner sharing and class discussion especially when we get to the part about why we should not take another person's medicine.

The two lessons for 4th and 5th grade could actually be three lessons.  The Decision Making and Peer Pressure lesson plan is a lot of fun and begins with  discussing how we make tough decisions and ends with individuals, then partners, and finally table groups coming to a decision on the amount of candy in a jar. The peer pressure and group dynamics are an amazing thing to watch.  Be sure you time this lesson so there is an opportunity for debriefing and class discussion at the end.  It is definitely needed especially if you have some passionate students who are not easily swayed.

I like to follow-up this lesson with the Saying NO PowerPoint.  This lesson can be concluded with the just the PowerPoint, or if you have time you can continue with the role playing suggestions from slide 17 to the end.

I hope these lessons are ones that you feel you can use with your students during the month of October and Red Ribbon Week.  What are some of class lessons you present to the students at your school?