Academic Success Skills:
6th Grade
Small Group Intervention
Clark Middle School Counseling Department: Luke Knight & Erika Aldridge
School Counseling Program Overview
San Diego Unified School District Clark Middle School
All San Diego students will graduate with the The mission of our counseling team is to
skills, motivation, curiosity and resilience to promote equity through a comprehensive
succeed in their choice of college and career school counseling program that benefits all
in order to lead and participate in the society students. Our program is designed to help all
of tomorrow. students reach their academic, personal, and
career goals. We believe that student
achievement is possible through access of
evidence-based resources.
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Needs Assessment: Why did we teach these lessons?
➔ 42 6th graders are failing one or more classes.
➔ 12% of 6th graders have a GPA below 2.0
The goal is to help all our sixth graders promote.
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Student Selection
◉ Asked for teacher recommendations, but only received two.
◉ Invited students with a GPA between 1.5 and 2.0 with seven or
fewer absences.
◉ 10 students were interested.
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Small Group
Action Plan
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Pre-Intervention Survey
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Consent Form
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Small Group Goals
Our small group focused on providing 6th graders with the attitudes,
knowledge, and skills to be more successful academically. In order to
do this, we built positive relationships, taught lessons, and
incorporated various activities that would engage the students and
teach them academic success skills. We hoped that these skills
would help students increase effort, increase homework and
classwork completion, and improve grades.
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Pre-post Assessment
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PARTICIPATION DATA
Academic Study Group Sessions
★ Welcome
Who: Ten 6th graders ★ Organization
What: 8 sessions ★ Paying Attention
Where: Counseling Office ★ Calculating GPAs
When: Thursdays from 12 - 12:30 ★ Study habits
★ SMART goals
★ Time management
★ Celebrate Success
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Lesson 2: Organization This stack of blocks
represents everything
Lesson Objectives you have to do to prepare
1. Students will understand that their for a class. As I read each
daily decisions affect their chances for statement, remove one
academic success. block and place it on top.
“Monday, Luke is late for
2. Students will develop strategies for class so he doesn’t have
academic success. time to look for his
homework. He doesn’t
3. Students will develop one or two turn in the assignment
academic success goals. even though he had
completed it.” ...
“What are Luke’s chances for success?”
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Lesson 3: Paying Attention
Many students expressed a need and desire to learn how to improve their focusing skills
Lesson Objectives Activity: Laser Focus
❖ Students will learn strategies to
improve their focusing skills.
❖ Students will practice using their
new focusing skills through an
interactive listening activity. cuts coat horse cut dog cow cat
horse cuts cut cow cut dog cat
coat cute horse dog cute cow dog
❖ Students will develop one or two
cow cut cat cat dog horse cut
new academic success goals.
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Lesson 5: Study Habits Activity
Write your first and last name as many
times as you can in 30 seconds. GO!
Is there a magic formula for doing better in school? Erika Aldridge
Erika Aldridge
Erika Aldridge
Erika Aldridge ...
This time, write your name - first and last -
Lesson Objectives
as many times as you can in 30 seconds,
BUT this time you’ll write it backwards.GO!
1. Students will understand that developing healthy study
habits takes practice and effort (there isn’t a magic formula). Egdirdla akire
Egdri… GAH!
2. Students will self-assess their current study habits.
Habits are hard to break. If we develop
3. Students will select three to seven study habits to
practice/improve and track this week. good study habits they can be as hard to
break and help us be more successful. 13
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Perception Data: Attitudes
It is better to turn in an assignment for partial credit than not at all.
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Perception Data: Knowledge
Percent of students for know what GPA stands for.
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Mindsets and Behavior Data: Skill
Number of students who can calculate a GPA.
That’s a
350%
increase!
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Outcome Data
The number of students passing all of their classes doubled!
That’s a
100%
increase!
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“
This group has helped me pay
attention during class and to try my
best and never give up fast.
This group has helped me expand my
thinking.
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Summary and Implications
Students received Students gained This Tier 2 intervention
valuable information knowledge, attitudes, contributed to the
about academic success and skills needed to improvement in grades
skills. improve their academic for 6 students.
success.
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Limitations, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps
Limitations
● Class changes may have impacted our data
● Scheduling only allowed for 30-minute sessions
Lessons Learned and Next Steps
● Conduct a pre-intervention survey to determine if the student is an appropriate fit for the group
● Conduct the pre-test one week before the first lesson so that we can adjust the lesson content
based on results
● Teach the SMART goals lesson earlier so that students can practice writing SMART goals throughout
the sessions
● Monitor progress by checking in with group members periodically
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THANK YOU!
Thank you teachers, administrators, and staff for
your hard work with students and your support
of our school counseling program!
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