Standards-aligned learning objectives focused on building health skill proficiency and strengthening students’ health literacy through real-world application.

✅ Students can practice active listening and taking turns in conversations.

✅ Students can identify and use simple ways to ask for help.

✅ Students can begin setting personal boundaries by saying what they are okay or not okay with and what they like and don’t like. 

✅ Students can show kindness and care in their communication with others.

Hands-on, engaging teaching activities that give students opportunities to practice each health skill in realistic, relevant ways.

🔎 Feelings Charades: Students act out different emotions or needs while classmates guess and practice responding kindly and respectfully.

🔎 Active Listening Checklist: During class discussions or partner talks, students use a checklist to track active listening behaviors like eye contact, nodding, and waiting their turn.

🔎 Red Light–Green Light: Boundaries Edition: Adapt the classic game to explore personal boundaries. Students decide if a statement is a “green light” (safe/comfortable), “yellow light” (unsure), or “red light” (unsafe/uncomfortable).

Standards-based assessment measures students' health literacy and their ability to apply the health skills in a real-life scenario, demonstrating both their understanding of the health skill and their capacity to use it to manage their health.

📚 Role-Play: Asking for Help + Setting Boundaries
Students demonstrate communication skills through short, guided role-plays. They practice asking a trusted adult for help and setting a simple boundary (e.g., saying no to an unwanted hug or asking for space). This shows their understanding of safe, respectful communication in real-life situations.

Standards-aligned learning objectives focused on building health skill proficiency and strengthening students’ health literacy through real-world application.

✅ Students can identify personal boundaries and recognize situations where they want or need to say no.

✅ Students can describe and practice using communication skill cues: TALK (general communication), NOPE (refusal), STOP (boundaries), COLLAB (collaboration), and TOOLS to Work It Out (conflict resolution).

✅ Students can begin using these skills in role-play and real-life practice to build confidence and fluency with more complex communication scenarios.

Hands-on, engaging teaching activities that give students opportunities to practice each health skill in realistic, relevant ways.

🔎 Skill Cue Sort + Sequence: Introduce the TALK, NOPE, STOP, COLLAB, and TOOLS skill cues. Use card sorts or sequencing activities to help students break down each cue and its steps.

🔎 Boundary Analysis: Present short scenarios where boundaries are respected or crossed. Students identify the boundary, how it was communicated, and how the situation could have been handled differently.

🔎 Mini Collaboration Challenges: Create quick partner or group tasks that require students to use COLLAB and TALK skill cues to complete a shared goal (e.g., planning a short skit or solving a classroom puzzle).

Standards-based assessment measures students' health literacy and their ability to apply the health skills in a real-life scenario, demonstrating both their understanding of the health skill and their capacity to use it to manage their health.

📚 Create a Conflict Resolution Artifact
Students design a creative, real-life tool, such as a spinner, flowchart, zine, or mini-booklet, that other students could use to navigate conflict. Their artifact must include common middle school conflict scenarios and clearly outline how to use the TOOLS to Work It Out cue to resolve them. The final product should be functional, reflective of their understanding, and easy for peers to use.

Standards-aligned learning objectives focused on building health skill proficiency and strengthening students’ health literacy through real-world application.

✅ Students can confidently use a range of communication skills in authentic, real-life situations across various settings (in-person, digital, peer, adult).

✅ Students can set and maintain boundaries and use refusal skills (NOPE) in ways that feel natural, respectful, and empowering.

✅ Students can use the TOOLS to Work It Out skill cues to navigate and resolve actual conflicts, applying empathy, personal responsibility, and problem-solving.

✅ Students can reflect on how their communication affects relationships and make intentional choices about how and when to speak, listen, and respond.

• Hands-on, engaging teaching activities that give students opportunities to practice each health skill in realistic, relevant ways.

🔎 Do This, Not That: Communication Critique: Analyze communication in real-life or media-based scenarios (texts, conversations, TV scenes). Students evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and rewrite the interaction using appropriate skill cues.

🔎 Conflict Lab: Present real-world conflict scenarios (school, relationships, digital miscommunication) and have students use TOOLS to Work It Out to resolve them collaboratively.

🔎 Boundary + Refusal Practice Circles: Students take turns practicing setting boundaries or refusing something respectfully and authentically, then receive supportive peer feedback.

Standards-based assessment measures students' health literacy and their ability to apply the health skills in a real-life scenario, demonstrating both their understanding of the health skill and their capacity to use it to manage their health.

📚 Authentic Refusal Skills Plan
Students complete a personal refusal skill analysis based on a real-life or relevant scenario. They identify a situation where they would want or need to say no, and map out a refusal plan using the NOPE cue. Their plan should reflect authentic language they’d actually use, how they’d manage pressure, and what support they might need to follow through.