How to Approach Counseling

Session Planning

1. Plan backwards.
2. Determine the end goal.
3. Flush out how you are going to assess it.
4. Then the fun part, how you are going to teach these skills
and have them generalize.

Questions to Think About

1. Collect all of your data on the student(s).
• What are the referral concerns? When/where do they struggle?
• Are they lacking skills, automaticity, or motivation to perform the preferred
behavior?
• What classroom, school, or home variables are impacting the student being
able to show the preferred behavior? What variables may be reinforcing the
problem behavior?
• What skills does the classroom teacher and staff need to support the
student effectively?
2. What is your end goal? What do you want the student to be able to do in order for
them not to need your services anymore?
• Write this as a SMART goal.
• How will you measure this?
3. What skills does the student need to be able to meet that end goal? (Written as a
SMART Goal)
• How would you assess this?
4. What are the smaller sub-skills they will need to acquire on the way to acquiring
the bigger skill?
• For example, reacting appropriately to someone knocking them over by
accident requires that they can identify emotion, list different ways to solve
a problem, and have calming strategies to use.
• How are you going to assess these sub-skills?
5. What activities will the student do during sessions to learn and practice these sub-
skills and skills?
6. How will you promote carryover?
• How will you assess that skills are being carried over?

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 Multi-Session Planning
End Goal:

Skill:

Sub-Skill Sub-Skill Sub-Skill

Assess Assess Assess

Activities Activities Activities

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 Counseling Session Plan
Session Focus: Session #:

Student(s): Grade:

Objective:
Activities

Materials Needed Assessment

Strategies to Generalize:

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 Assessment Objective Subjective
Plan Your take on the objective description Description of your
Next Session, Calls, child’s reaction to of what the child did experience of the
what you need to do the session activities and what was said. session.
to keep moving and on progress

Student(s):
towards the goal. towards goals.
Session Focus:

Grade:
Session #:
Counseling Session SOAP Notes

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