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Elementary School Counselor Read Alouds
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items I have had the privilege of being an elementary school counselor for over 14 years and I teach social-emotional learning lessons in classrooms K-6 every month. I love reading stories, and I love reading stories to kids, but I can be a bit picky when ...
This book is about a girl who has trouble connecting with others so she makes her own friends arts-and-crafts style. Using her strengths and being herself, another kid befriends her and helps her to connect with others. There is a lot to talk about i...
Meesha Makes Friends (Big Bright Feelings)
When you are a square in a world built for circles, it's tough. When you're a square and you're expected to pretend to be a circle, it might be tougher. There is a lot to unpack in this story. Why did their parents have them pretend to be a circle? W...
Fitting In: Inclusive Picture Book for Kids
I read this story to my sixth graders. As they enter early teenage years they have already gotten so much feedback from others, positive and negative, about who they are and what they do. This book reminds us that we get to decide what feedback we ho...
Seeds and Trees: A Kids' Book on Words
I love this book. My students love this book. There are lines in this book that make me just about tear up every time. There are classes that burst into applause spontaneously at the end. It's a great book. The author gives so much life and expressio...
One
I read this to fourth graders because friendship triangles sure is a hot topic at around that age. This book touches on jealousy when a new friend pulls your best friend away, and how unhelpful it can be when a bunch of other people decide to get inv...
Two
I love the way that sharing is broken down in this book. Honestly, I had not thought about how many different ways we can share things until I started reading this to kindergarteners. They love getting to talk through what's happening in the pictures...
Share and Take Turns (Learning to Get Along 1)
This is one of those books that the students love but also the teachers look forward to me reading as well. It's just so cute. We talk not only about sharing in second grade with this story, but also about apologizing. Gruntly never actually says he'...
All for Me and None for All
This book kills every time, but you have to bring the drama when you read it. I use this book to talk about small problems and that small problems don't always mean small feelings, but they do mean that we can try to solve them ourselves before askin...
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible Day
This book was recommended to me by another school counselor when I was first starting out and I have recommended it so many times to teachers and families since then. My copy has gone missing at least twice when someone has borrowed it and not return...
Lifetimes: Explaining Death to Children
I added this book a bit more recently and it has been a huge hit. This also looks at friendship triangles and the difficulty of adding a third person to an existing twosome. The illustrations give little clues regarding solutions, and I like that dis...
A Pair of Pears and an Orange
This is another book I added a bit more recently but I now look forward to reading it each time. I don't always love books that are designed to be for social-emotional learning, but boundaries are an important topic and I really appreciate the way th...
The Not-So-Friendly Friend: Set Boundaries
This is my favorite Howard B. Wigglebottom book and I think it's a great book to introduce anger, because it emphasizes that what he did when he was angry got him in trouble, not that he was angry. It's okay to feel angry, it's not okay to lunge at p...
Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Back Away
My other favorite Howard book, and I like this one because in the end the twins that are bullying Howard "learn an important lesson" when Howard finally reports what is happening. This opens up a discussion about reporting not just for the person bei...
Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Bullies
I first read this one during COVID lockdown sitting in front of my computer during remote learning to remind everyone that even though we weren't all physically together at that time, we were still connected. Of course, this book is great for all kin...
The Invisible String (The Invisible String, 1)
There are so many little spot books, and they're great, but this is the one that my students talk and talk and talk about long after I have read it. I print out the exercise so they can take it home and it is a huge hit. Everyone is worried about som...
A Little SPOT of Anxiety: Calming Worries
Students really enjoy the art in this book, but also, I find that any time a book has the character's emotion represented by another character, it just leads to deeper discussion. We can analyze what is going on with the emotion on a deeper level. Th...
Steps and Stones: An Anh's Anger Story
We talk about personal safety every year and this is a story I had intended to only use with kindergarten, but older students actually like it as well. This book talks about good and bad secrets and how to tell the difference between the two, as well...
Do You Have a Secret? Children's Mental Health
There are a TON of books in the Learning to Get Along series, but Talk and Work It Out has been a favorite for a long time. My kindergarteners love getting to identify the problems in the story and come up with their own solutions before seeing what ...
Talk and Work It Out (Learning to Get Along®)
I use this book to talk about apologizing with kindergarteners. We talk about whether or not what Elizabeth did was an accident or on purpose (and how can we tell the difference?), what her face and body are doing to show that she is sorry about what...
Lively Elizabeth!: What Happens When You Push
Desmond Tutu wrote a children's book and it is so good. I read this to my older students. It leads to some great discussions about how revenge doesn't always make us feel better, what happens if the world is just full of "get backs" and that sometime...
Desmond and the Very Mean Word
Another book about boundaries but this one gets the younger kids all riled up! Noni's friend is not a great house guest and Noni can't say no even though she wants to. By the end the kids are almost yelling at Noni to stand up for herself. And when s...
Noni Says No
I don't read this one anymore because it's so long we just don't have the time for it like we used to, but it is so good and all of my students were engaged when I would read it (I read it to older kids). We talked about it being a true story and the...
The Hundred Dresses
I use this story to talk about bullying and we review the definition and then apply it to the characters in the book. I read it to fourth graders because younger kids wouldn't get past the naked mole rats being naked. This story is adorable and it le...
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
This is one of those books that captivates my kindergarteners almost immediately. They are drawn to the art and also connect with how angry Sophie feels when she doesn't get what she wants. We talk through all the things Sophie does to calm down and ...
When Sophie Gets Angry - Really Angry