Environmental Health Matching Activity: How Your Surroundings Impact Your Feelings, Thoughts, and Actions
An INSTANT activity to teach analyzing influences and environmental health.
This classroom engagement is great for introducing students to four core communities in their lives: Earth, Community, School, and Home, and to help them build awareness of how their surroundings influence how they feel, think, and act. Understanding how influences in your life impact how you feel, think, and act is the key to learning how to analyze influences (SHAPE America Standard #2).
How this Health Instant Activity Works
A matching activity like this can be used with any health curriuclum or lesson. It works great as an instant entry task or as a review. With my health students, I used it to explore key environments in their lives AND to share specific examples of how we’re influenced by the spaces we live our lives in.
After printing, cutting out, and organizing (I like to put them in ziplock bags) sets of the cards, here’s how to use this instant activity in your classroom:
Ask students to get into groups of 2-3 (I tend to let kids choose their own groups, I find that they work better).
Direct students to match the identity if a scenario is an example of feeling, thinking, or acting.
Debrief as a class.
Discussion Prompts for Health Class
Here are a few prompts students can discuss after the activity:
What environments do you have in your life?
How has space influenced how you acted?
Which environment(s) makes you happy?
Overall, this classroom engagement is a win!