Why create an advisory period?

Creating an advisory period enriches your students’ day. An advisory period is a time for students to build positive relationships with staff, build relationships with one another, start the day with routine and structure, and focus on non-cognitive skills.

Relationships

The research and much of our experience show that students are more engaged in school when they have positive relationships with their teachers. An advisory period gives staff a great opportunity to build relationships with students. It is a structured time to greet them, check in on them, have real conversations, and help them reach their goals.

Students will practice relationship-building skills with one another. Check-ins and conversations in class will grow empathy for one another and strengthen their relationships. They will have more understanding when someone is having a bad day. It is an opportunity for students to grow and support one another.

Non-Cognitive Skills

An advisory period is a structured time to implement SEL, RTI, MTSS, and grade checks. When these things are left for teachers to fit into their normal instructional time, they are frequently not implemented with fidelity. Teachers also feel overwhelmed when they think about fitting them in. With an advisory period, it is a specific time of day that is already made for these activities. Students have a routine in their day to receive these skills and services. You have an opportunity to run small groups without needing to pull students from academic classes. Teachers have an opportunity to pull students for reteaching. An advisory period provides adequate time to implement your tier I social and emotional curriculum.

Employers are reporting that the main reason they have to fire employees is for lack of soft skills. These are the skills taught through SEL. An advisory period is a perfect time for your teachers to focus on teaching soft skills. Soft skills will prepare students to be career-ready when they leave your school.

Creating an Advisory Period

When creating an advisory period, you will want to figure out when to schedule it. We recommend against scheduling your advisory period at the end of the day. It can challenge student behavior and is easily turned into study hall instead.

Look at scheduling your advisory period in the first 20-30 minutes of school. This is a great time to prepare students mentally for the day and ready to learn. Another option would be around lunchtime. You may need to start small. You can do this by doing advisory period activities during the first 5 minutes of class.

What do you do during an advisory period?

Now that you have this time, what do you do with it? A great option is to use your advisory period for Check-ins and Check-outs. There are many ways to incorporate check-ins. You can do a themed check-in for each day. For example, Motivational Monday, Teaser Tuesday, Would You Rather Wednesday, Think About it Thursday, and Fun Friday. We have examples of these every weekday on our Instagram page! Try this as a checkout question, “What is one positive thing that happened this week and one thing you want to improve next week?”

An advisory period is a perfect time to implement a weekly SEL lesson. You can present the lesson on Monday and then continue discussing it throughout the week or implement shorter activities that reinforce your lesson.

Small groups are very easy to implement during an advisory period. You can do groups for academics, special education, language learners, high ability, mental health, social skills, and executive functioning skills.

An advisory period is a perfect time for students to check on their grades regularly. Students can set goals with their teacher as well. We strongly discourage you from using an advisory period as a study hall.

The Mind Trek Program offers a sample advisory period schedule to help you create an advisory period. It provides a full curriculum with additional activities, small group lessons, and grade trackers, along with goal-setting sheets.

SEL Unfiltered

Do you want to hear more? Check out the rest of our series on Creating and Implementing an SEL Program on our SEL Unfiltered podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts.

Check out other episodes in our Implementing an SEL program, including The Benefits of SEL, Creating an Advisory Council, Developing Your SEL Framework, Choosing an SEL Program, and Initial Implementation of an SEL Program.

Game of the Week

Every week on SEL Unfiltered, we like to bring you a game or activity. You can use the game with your students, in the classroom, or in a small group. This week Kaitlin and I played a game of Classroom Guess Who.

Classroom Guess Who is a variation of the classic Guess Who board game. There are multiple ways that you can play with your class or small group.

You can utilize the classic board game. Give every student a guess who board, make a paper copy, or show a large copy for the entire class to see. Draw a card. Go around the room, giving your students a chance to ask questions about the person.

Make this game more challenging by limiting the number of questions the class has before making a guess. You can also allow a student to draw the card and answer the class’s questions.

Classroom Guess Who can also be played by utilizing students in your class instead of the classic game board. Your entire classroom is the board. Select a student in your mind and answer the questions regarding that student instead of drawing a card. Students can start the game by standing. A student that does not meet a characteristic of the student selected will sit down.

For example, a student asks if the person has red hair. Your chosen student has red hair so you would say yes. Then everyone in the class without red hair would sit down.

Make the game fit your subject area. In a Geography class, you can play Guess Where instead of Guess who. Perhaps you teach history. Then play Guess Who, but use historical figures that you are going over in class. The variations are limitless.