What I Taught This Week in Health Class - SHAPE Health Skills + Media Messages
Here’s a look at what I taught this week in preschool, elementary, middle school, and high school health class. This was one of those weeks where not everything went quite as planned but we rolled with it and made it work.
Table of Contents:
Preschool Health: Resilience
Elementary Health: Healthy Habits & Making New Habits
Speed Talk Discussion (a.k.a. Speed Dating)
Middle School Health: SHAPE Health Skills
Health Skills Cootie Catcher - Buy | Free Access for Members
Matching: Pause, Reflect, and Act Skill Cues - Buy | Free Access for Members
High School Health: The Health Skills + Media Messages
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Preschool Health Class
This week for preschool health class, we read the book “I Am Courage - A Book of Resilience.” I picked it to continue the conversation from last week about healthy habits. This book focused on one big healthy habit - resilience! The kids enjoyed it and they LOVED telling me about times they were scared or made a mistake and tried again:)
I am Courage - A Book of Resilience by Susan Verde
Elementary Health Class
Elementary health was a little bit chaotic this week. You know how some days just don’t click, well this was one of those days. The focus this week was on healthy habits and working to create a new habit.
Speed Talk Discussion (a.k.a. Speed Dating)
Four Corners - Healthy Habits Edition
Healthy Habit Tracker - Free Access for Members
BEST Model Bookmark - Free Access for Members
SPEED TALK
We started class with a discussion activity. The hope was to get students thinking about new habits they’d like to build. I had students line up their chairs in two lines facing each other (like a speed dating set up). I would ask a question for the kids to talk about. After they chatted, one line of students would stay seated and the other row would rotate.
Here are some of the questions they discussed (each related to an element of the BEST Model):
What new sport or physical activity do you want to try?
What’s a chore you could get better at?
Who do you ask for help?
What’s one way you can be a better friend?
FOUR CORNERS - HEALTHY HABITS EDITION
Next, we reviewed what a habit is and then I had them play four corners. NGL, this was something I made up on the spot. They were more antsy than usual, so I wanted them to get the wiggles out. For this classroom game, I labeled each corner a letter from BEST. Then, I shared a healthy habit and students had to determine if the habit was related to B - Body, E - Environment, S - Self, or T - (Social) Ties and go to the respective corner.
It ended up being a great way to get them moving, to review the BEST Model, and to increase their understanding of healthy habits.
HABIT TRACKER WORKSHEET
After reflecting on healthy habits, students grabbed their health notebooks and I passed out a habit tracking worksheet. The idea behind this lesson is that identifying and building a new habit is a precursor to full on goal writing.
The plan was for students to independently pick a new healthy habit to build and keep track of it for five days. However, I quickly realized they weren't quite ready to come up with their own habit. So we made a list of new habits on the whiteboard and then I had them pick one from the list. After they wrote down their new habit and colored their worksheet, they glued it into the health notebook.
For this health worksheet, I opted for a five day tracker. My thought was that if their teacher chose to, they could dedicate a few minutes each day to checking off their habit. Practically speaking (from a parent POV), this seems much more realistic than having students take them home. Honestly though, even if they don’t track their habit progress daily, the process of assessing their life and finding something they want to improve helps lay the groundwork for goal setting.
BEST BOOKMARK
The last elementary health activity was these BEST bookmarks. I love having students make bookmarks. They can serve as helpful reminders and the students loved using them. I wasn’t sure if we’d have time for this but I printed it out just in case. I’m glad I did because it gave the early finishers something to do.
For this one, I encouraged students to draw examples of how they can take care of each element of their health with the BEST dimensions of health. Most opted just to color and that’s okay. After class, I laminated them and I’ll give them back next week.
Middle School Health
This week in middle school health, we continued exploring the health skills. Last class period was an introduction, this week students started making connections between the SHAPE health skills and their real life.
Health Skills Cootie Catcher - Buy | Free Access for Members
Matching: Pause, Reflect, and Act Skill Cues - Buy | Free Access for Members
PAUSE Bookmarks - Blog | Free Access for Members
HEALTH SKILLS COOTIE CATCHER
To start class, I passed out the health skills cootie catchers. Students used dice to determine how many times to open and close the catcher and then they rolled again to pick which flap to open. Each section featured health skill related questions to discuss. This was a great instant activity to get class started and it helped students see where the health skills show up in their lives.
HEALTH SKILLS IRL SCAVENGER HUNT
After the entry task, we reviewed the health skills with the health skills toolbox. I also shared examples of the health skills from my own life. Then, I asked them to draw out a grid (with eight boxes) in the health notebooks. In each box, they shared an example of how they’ve used each health skill in real life.
Self-Management Skill Practice - PAUSE, REFLECT, and ACT
Once we’d examined the health skills, we narrowed the focus on one skill - Standard #7: Self-Management. I chose to start with self-management because I believe it’s the overarching skill encompassing health education and the other skills are what enable a person to manage their well-being.
To explore the skill of self-management, we started with a conversation and brain dump about healthy habits. Then, I introduced them to the Pause, Reflect, and Act skill cues and they did a matching activity to examine the steps:
Pause - Create space between you and the situation
Reflect - Figure out what’s going on and what you want to do next
Act - Act with intention
PAUSE BOOKMARK
After debriefing the activity, students did a bookmark making craft. This is a PAUSE bookmark for students to use as a quick reminder on how to practice the self-management skill cues. The bookmark visuals walk students through the self-management skill cues. For the reflection section, students wrote out their own 4-3-2-1 calm down/grounding activity. It also features three reflection questions to help students be able to act intentionally.
Blog | Free Access for Members
This is where we wrapped up class. Next week, we’re going to explore how we can incorporate each of the other health skills into the Pause, Reflect, and Act skill cues.
High School Health Class
Last up, high school health! This week my high schoolers continued to explore the SHAPE America health skills and connect them to their real lives. We also kicked off a conversation about media literacy by talking about media messages.
Health Skills Matching Activity - Buy | Free Access for Members
Pause, Reflect, and Act Bookmark - Blog Post | Free Access for Members
Media Message Examples
HEALTH SKILLS MATCHING ACTIVITY
We started class by diving right back into the health skills with a matching activity. Last class period was the first time these students were introduced to the health skills. So they’re definitely going to need a bit more reinforcement as they build this foundational health knowledge.
This matching activity helped refresh their understanding of each skill and their related skill cues. It also shared an example of what the skills look like in real life. Once students were done sorting, we debriefed and reviewed the skills again. I also gave some specific examples from my own life about how I use the skills. To wrap up this activity, I asked them to identify skills they used IRL and to write them down in their health notebook.
SELF-MANAGEMENT SKILL CUES
Next up, similar to middle school we shifted the focus to the skill of self-management. In full transparency, I forgot the Pause, Reflect, and Act skill cues matching activity at home. So instead of using the interactive resource (which definitely would’ve been better 😫), I turned to the trusty whiteboard:
Pause - Create space between you and the situation
Reflect - Figure out what’s going on and what you want to do next
Act - Act with intention
Then, I passed out the Self-Management Bookmarks to show them one way to use the Pause, Reflect, and Act skills cues and had them customize their own. After designing it, we went back to the whiteboard to explore how this skill cue can be used with each of the other health skills.
For this exploration, I ask students to share a real life health issue/challenge in their life. Then, as a class we discussed which health skill you could use for the reflect and act steps of the skill cue. Here’s an example:
What’s the Health Issue?
Feeling overwhelmed with school and other responsibilities due to mismanaging time/energy and taking on too much.
Skill for the Reflect and Act steps of the skill cue:
Goal Setting - Assessing what needs to change, naming a goal, and setting a specific plan to follow.
Decision Making - After setting a goal, making decisions to actually follow through with the plan.
Communication - Specifically, being able to self-advocate and ask for help.
I had to be patient with this activity. It took a bit of prodding for students to connect the dots. But once it started to click, the connections flowed. The whole process was a great reminder of how much reinforcement students need with the idea of each health skill and the corresponding skill cue for them to genuinely be able to use them in their daily lives.
Teaching Note: I definitely should’ve chatted with the high schoolers more about healthy habits. It’s a bit of a simpler entry point into talking about Standard #7. We will for sure be starting that in their next class (and I’ve already written notes down for next year).
MEDIA MESSAGES
After the PAUSE skill cue, we did a bit of a hard pivot to talking about media messages. A core teaching goal I have for high school this school year is to focus on media literacy throughout the entire course/year. My hope is that by starting to talk about it early on, students will better be able to examine how media impacts and shapes most, if not all of, the health issues in their lives.
To start the conversation, I asked students to write down any and everything that comes to mind when they hear the word “media.” Building off their brain dump about media, we examined the definition of a media message. As a bit of a simplified definition I explained that a Media Message is what a piece of media is telling you.
To begin exploring the idea, I shared pieces of media with students and asked them to identify the media messages in each. These are the media examples I used, along with some of the media messages students pointed out (and a few I shared with them):
Media Messages: Aryna Sabalenka won the USA Open, she repeated her win, and she beat an American.
Media Messages: An advertisement to drink Michelob Ultra; promoting the belief that drinking alcohol improves overall quality of life; more specifically that drinking a Michelob Ultra will help you life an ultra life.
Media Messages: Pizza is yummy; more pepperoni = better pizza; travel to Canada; promoting the small business pizza shop.
Media Messages: Soda is refreshing and delicious but soda with sugar is harmful for you; drinking Poppi will make your life colorful and exciting while looking cute, having lots of friends, and doing fun things like hanging out at pool parties; Poppi is better alternative to traditional soda.
This ended up being a good introduction to media messages. There’s still a lot of conversations to be had, but for this lesson I just wanted students to begin to build an awareness that everything they consume has a media message, a message they are absorbing, one that is influencing how they feel, think, and act.
After discussing the examples I shared, I gave students a few moments to scroll through their go-to online sites and identify a media message. I could’ve added a bit more structure to this activity. But it still worked okay. Students found pieces of media and were able to identify media messages. It was a great starting point and in the next lesson, we’ll continue to talk about media, media literacy, and media messages.
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you found some fun health teaching ideas and lesson plan inspiration! See you next week ☺️
