Blog

7 Reasons to Use Journaling in Health Class

  Journaling has been a big part of my health classes since the day I became a teacher, and the benefits it has had on my teaching practice keep piling up every year. Even with all of the technological advances

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4 Cross-Curricular Projects with a Focus on Health

  Short on instructional time? Health is a universal, so team up with another teacher on campus and see where you can layer in health literacy skills with other content areas. The field of education is currently undergoing a big shift from

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4 Ways to Implement Cross-Curricular Learning in Health

The field of education is currently undergoing a big shift from traditional methods of instruction to project-based learning (PBL). Most teachers are excited to implement PBL in their classrooms, but in subjects like health, where instruction time is limited, teachers

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5 Tips for Teaching Kids How to Set Goals

National Health Education Standard 4: Students will demonstrate the ability to use goal-setting skills to enhance health. One of the best ways to kick off the school year is with a unit on goal setting, since everyone returns fresh from

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Talking to Kids About Emotions Using Pixar’s Inside Out

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Summer Institute for Educators at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, where we attended presentations from a variety of experts in the field of mindfulness and Social/Emotional Learning—often referred to as SEL. On

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The Alcohol Research Lab

It’s the end of the school year. This means our seniors are getting ready for college, the eighth graders are gearing up for high school, and many of our students will be faced with situations where they might be tempted

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Inspiring PSAs to Show in Health Class

A huge part of what we teach in health class is advocacy, and one of the most effective ways to advocate is through PSAs, or public service announcements. I’ve been having my students make them since back in the days

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What Influences Teenagers to Drink?

This post originally appeared on Choices.Scholastic.com In the old-school method of health education, we were taught that alcohol use was mostly caused by peer pressure, and I grew up envisioning high school as some sort of giant John Hughes party

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5 TED Talks to Use During Health Class

This week, I’ve been getting ready to make the trek from Shanghai out to Seattle for the SHAPE America National convention, and I’m super excited. Love the chance to connect with other health teachers and see what everyone’s been up to.

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Teaching Kids to Challenge Gender Stereotypes

Standard 2: Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behaviors. … Over the last year or so, there’s been a large amount of attention in the media on gender stereotypes and how

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PBL to Teach Kids About Vaping & E-Cigarettes

It’s time to overhaul our approach to tobacco prevention. While this generation of teenagers has gotten smarter about smoking, and rates of traditional cigarette use are down, rates of e-cigarettes have tripled over the last three years. There are a

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Cultivating Happiness in Health Class

In a prior post I wrote about positive psychology—which is the study of the things that make life worth living—and why it is such a perfect fit when you’re trying to teach kids about health. This week, I’ll share some easy

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Starting a Classroom Meditation Practice

“OK, I get it. The kids need to meditate… but how does that work, exactly?” We live in some hyper-connected times; stress levels are on the way up as attention spans are on the way down. Equipping students with the skills needed

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What’s Happening in Today’s Health Class?

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease. -World Health Organization I remember my high school health class. Vaguely. I remember the textbooks, the worksheets, the videos — oh, the

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Using Positivity to Combat Cyberbullying

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, so your #ChoicesChallenge is to Stop the Hate. So how do we do that? Well, all of those anti-bullying messages — you know, the “No Bully Zone” posters — haven’t really been resonating with kids,

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