During the 2017-18 school year we placed a heavy emphasis on growth mindset. It created a solid foundation for the year and connected to our program goal of increasing the pass rate on the Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment for our Black and Hispanic students in fourth and fifth grade. In total we had 112 of our 116 fourth graders present for all three lessons which was 96.5% of all fourth-grade students. We connected the questions on the pre and post assessment (perception data) to our ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors by asking two questions on a Likert scale. These gauged the student’s beliefs and attitudes towards working through a situation that is difficult. We asked a question that would help gauge student knowledge on growth mindset as well as goal setting. In the future we would keep the same questions, but ask them prior to the lesson. This information would be helpful to have when planning the lesson since we weren’t able disseminate the data until after the first lesson. Our post-assessment results helped inform future school counseling activities by showing that there is a need for multiple lessons on growth mindset. This was the first year we taught this type of lesson in a unit and although there was an increase in student’s attitudes and beliefs, it was not significant. The outcome data was connected to the SOL assessments and there was an increase in math scores, but a decrease in reading scores. We plan to continue teaching this type of unit and will continue tracking this data.
Our Kindergarten lesson on personal space was part of a three-lesson unit on self-discipline and self-control. Each lesson had its own perception data but the same shared the same outcome data. 110 of our 115 Kindergarten students were present for this lesson which was 95.6% of all Kindergarten students. The data was directly tied to the ASCA Social/Emotional Mindsets and Behaviors of self-discipline and self-control. After examining the data, it is evident that the students did learn about personal space and that the lesson was effective because 100% of the students were able to demonstrate personal space using the hula hoops and 91.81% were able to demonstrate their knowledge of personal space with the personal space drawing assessment. It would be more impactful if we had collected pre-data to show the increase as a result of our lesson. When examining the outcome data, it was evident that this lesson may have been timelier earlier in the year. One of our school counseling goals was to reduce the percentage of Kindergarten students receiving a Behavior Notification each quarter by 20%. When examining the outcome data we found that 24 behavior notifications were received during the 3rd quarter when this lesson was taught. During the 4th quarter 14 behavior notifications were issued which is a decrease of 41.6%. Next year we plan to move this lesson to the first quarter to coincide with the teaching of our school rules and to establish a foundation for behavior with which to build on throughout the year. We will monitor the data to see if this helps level out or decrease the Behavior Notifications received during the 2018-19 school year.
The fifth-grade lesson was part of a unit on skills for learning. This lesson was first and focused on strategies for reducing worry/anxiety. This was connected to our school counseling program goal of increasing the pass rate on the SOL assessments for our Black and Hispanic students. 118 of our 121 fifth graders were present for the lesson which is 97.5% of all fifth graders. The data was directly linked to the ASCA Academic and Social/Emotional Mindsets and Behavior of coping skills when faced with a problem. The perception data shows that students did increase their knowledge of strategies they can use to calm down when feeling nervous/anxious during a test. What was not measured, but would be very useful in determining the effectiveness of this lesson was whether the students put these strategies to use during a test. Next year we plan to gather data on this a month after teaching the lesson. When examining the outcome data there was an increase in the pass rate of Black students on both the reading and math SOL and an increase on the math and no change on the reading for our Hispanic students. This is a positive change and helped reinforce the need for this type of lesson for fifth-grade students.