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Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education
Meeting Secondary-Level National Standards
by Sarah Benes and Holly Alperin
Series: SHAPE America set the Standard
312 Pages
Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education is a highly practical and useful resource for middle school and high school health educators looking for innovative and tried-and-true ways to implement a skills-based approach to health education.
The text—written by renowned authors Sarah Benes and Holly Alperin, along with experts in the field, including many SHAPE America Teacher of the Year honorees—offers effective, skills-based learning activities, lessons, units, and assessments that you can use in your classroom as they are or with modifications to meet the needs of your students. You can use this text to build a completely new curriculum or to supplement your existing curriculum, providing a smooth transition from a content-based approach to a skills-based approach. The authors explain the rationale and foundation for making that transition, putting the lesson plans, activities, and assessments in context for you as you learn how to implement a skills-based approach.
The 64 lessons and activities in Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education have been
• created by the authors and a number of experienced teachers broadly recognized for their expertise in skills-based health education,
• organized to map to the skills in the National Health Education Standards and aligned with a five-step skill-development model
• designed to be flexible and adaptable to meet the needs of a wide range of educators, from those wanting a complete new curriculum to those wanting to simply supplement their existing curriculum while meeting the needs of all students.
Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education is an ideal companion to The Essentials of Teaching Health Education, another book by Benes and Alperin, which presents teaching and assessment strategies for planning and implementing a skills-based approach to teaching health education. Together, these two books can help you effectively teach skills-based health education from day one.
Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education offers a detailed, easy-to-use learning activity template and employs a teacher-friendly format that has been proven effective in the field. It comes with a web resource that has digital versions of the many reproducible forms in the text.
The text is organized into two parts. Part I delves into key aspects of planning, implementing, and assessing a skills-based approach, offering you a strong foundation in the core concepts of the approach. Each of the part II chapters is devoted to a skill addressed in the National Health Education Standards, providing you with the following material:
• An overview of the skill
• Key considerations for teaching the skill
• A unit outline
• Assessments
• Lesson plans
• Learning activities
Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education offers you all you need to put a skills-based approach into practice: the solid foundational information that explains the concepts and the resources, tools, and strategies to help you implement the lesson plans and activities that will aid your students in developing proficiency in the skills emphasized in the national standards. Through this text, you will be able to offer instruction that challenges your students and provides them with opportunities to meet the standards in a classroom environment that is engaging, thought provoking, and relevant.
Part I. Skills-Based Health Education: An Overview
Chapter 1. Skills-Based Health Education: An Overview
Alignment With the National Health Education Standards
Skill Development and Assessment
Participatory Methods
Functional Information
Chapter 2. Designing Your Health Curriculum
Eight Steps of Curriculum Design
Using This Text
Part II. Skills in the Classroom
Chapter 3. Developing the Skill of Accessing Valid and Reliable Information, Products, and Services to Enhance Students’ Health
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: To Trust or Not To Trust
Lesson 2: ACCESSing Valid and Reliable Information, Products, and Services
Lesson 3: Grocery Games
Lesson 4: Is It Healthy?
Lessons 5 and 6: Podcasts
Lessons 7 and 8: Who and What Is in My Neighborhood?
Bonus Activity
Chapter 4. Helping Students to Analyze Influences on Their Health
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: Influences, Influences, All Around
Lesson 2: Web of Influences
Lesson 3: What Would You Do?
Lesson 4: Perceptions, Norms, and Behavior
Lesson 5: Exploring the Impact of Media
Lessons 6 and 7: Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Lesson 8: Social Media and Technology
Chapter 5. Developing Interpersonal Communication Skills for Health and Wellness
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: I Wish I Could Talk To . . .
Lesson 2: What Does Effective Communication Look Like, Sound Like, Feel Like?
Lesson 3: Identifying Effective Communication
Lesson 4: Fishing for Healthy Relationships
Lesson 5: Real Life Relationships
Lesson 6: What’s Your Story?
Lessons 7, 8, 9, and 10: Let’s Communicate Together!
Chapter 6. Developing the Skill of Decision Making to Improve Health Outcomes
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: Decisions, What Decisions?
Lesson 2: How Do I DECIDE What to Do?
Lesson 3: Using Ethical Tests to Make Decisions
Lessons 4 and 5: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Illegal Drug Webquest
Lesson 6: Revisiting the Scene of the Party
Lessons 7 and 8: Let’s Make a Decision
Lesson 9: Let’s Enjoy Some Comics
Chapter 7. Learning to Set Goals to Enhance Our Health
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: There Is Life After High School . . . Where Do You Want It to Lead?
Lesson 2: Introduction to the Dimensions of Wellness
Lesson 3: Dimensions of Wellness Self-Assessment
Lesson 4: Got Goals?
Lesson 5: Creating a Vision
Lesson 6: Recruit Your Champions
Lesson 7: Goal Check—Revisit, Reevaluate, and Revise (if Needed)
Lessons 8 and 9: One SMART Celebration
Chapter 8. Self-Management for a Healthy Lifestyle
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: Developing Healthy Habits
Lesson 2: Happiness Is Healthy
Lesson 3: Strategies for Increasing Happiness
Lesson 4: Strategies for Increasing Happiness (Continued)
Lesson 5: Healthy Mind, Healthy Me
Lesson 6: Understanding Mental Health
Lesson 7: When to Seek Help and Where to Find It
Lesson 8: Sharing Is Caring
Chapter 9. Teaching Students Advocacy Skills to Improve Health
Skill Overview
Skill Cues
Unit Outline
Assessment
Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: What Is Advocacy?
Lesson 2: Becoming an Advocate
Lesson 3: Data, Data Everywhere!
Lesson 4: Finding Evidence
Lesson 5: Advocacy Action
Lesson 6: Peer Feedback
Lesson 7: Collaborating for a Cause
Lesson 8: The Finishing Touches
Lesson 9: Assessment—Advocacy in Action
Sarah Sparrow Benes, EdD, CHES, is a senior director and lecturer in graduate health sciences at Merrimack College. Sarah teaches a variety of undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in health sciences, does service projects in local communities, and conducts research on health education and physical activity in schools. Dr. Benes was the program director for physical and health education programs at Boston University for six years before coming to Merrimack College. She has numerous publications in refereed journals and has written chapters examining health education; she has also made more than a dozen presentations on skills-based health education and related topics at state and regional conferences. Sarah serves on a variety of health education committees, including the health education council for SHAPE America (Society of Health and Physical Educators) and is the former vice president of health education for the Massachusetts Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. Benes is consulted by school districts on health and wellness issues, with a focus on skills-based curriculum development and implementation. She is a certified health education specialist and a member of SHAPE America. Sarah received a bachelor degree in athletic training from the University of Connecticut, a master degree in education from Boston University, and a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Boston University; she is currently working on a master of public health degree. She lives in Natick, Massachusetts, with her husband, two daughters, and yellow Labrador retriever. She enjoys spending time with her family on nature walks and enjoying the sights and sounds of the Northeast.
Holly Alperin, EdM, MCHES, is a clinical associate professor at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and has over 20 years’ experience in both public health and education. As a faculty member and program coordinator of the department of kinesiology’s health and physical education teacher preparation program, she focuses on preparing preservice educators to teach using a skills-based approach. Prior to UNH, she worked at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in a variety of roles that supported schools in their efforts to strengthen policies and increase capacity around school health education and programs, school nutrition programs, and professional learning experiences for educators. Through her work at the local, state, national, and international levels she provides guidance to schools as they create a culture of health and well-being for each student—both in the health education classroom and throughout the school. Alperin is the past vice president of health education for New Hampshire Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, currently serves on the taskforce to revise the National Health Education Standards, and is the past-chair of the Health Education Council for SHAPE America, among other volunteer roles. Alperin received her master’s in education in policy, planning, and administration from Boston University and her bachelor’s degree in health education and health promotion from Central Michigan University. She holds the Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES) credential. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two daughters. In her free time you can likely find her in the mountains or at the beach enjoying the best New England has to offer.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Skill Development and Assessment
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback.
For students to have the confidence and competence to apply skills, we first must take the time to teach them about the skill, demonstrate how the skill looks in action, and provide opportunities for practice and feedback. The following skill development model provides a step-by-step approach to framing each skills-based unit (Benes & Alperin, 2016, p. 29):
- Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.
- Present steps for developing the skill.
- Model the skill.
- Practice the skill using real-life scenarios.
- Provide feedback and reinforcement.
During step 1, we introduce students to the skill, provide a foundation for understanding the skill, and explain why the skill is relevant and meaningful for them. It's often helpful to use the stem "____________ is the ability to . . ." because a skill is something that you are able to do. Here is an example:
Advocacy is the ability to stand up for what one believes and to influence others. When we advocate for healthy behaviors, we are encouraging others to replace unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones, such as not smoking or putting your phone out of reach while driving to prevent you from texting while driving.
Students will be motivated to learn the skill if they understand and buy into why the skill matters to them and why and how their ability to perform the skill effectively will benefit them.
Advocacy is important for students your age because many kids look to their peers for support and as role models. When we advocate for safer cell phone use while driving, we are helping our peers to be healthier in their choices and are creating a safer community. Can you think of other reasons why advocacy is important to you and your peers?
Finally, during this step we explain the educational outcomes for the unit - what students will know and be able to do at the end of the unit.
To do this, we will spend some time practicing being an advocate, and by the end of this unit, you will be able to
- describe the importance of advocacy on improving our health,
- consider peer and societal norms to design an advocacy campaign that encourages peers to adopt healthier behaviors, and
- demonstrate how to influence others by sharing your health-enhancing message with your peers.
For more detail on developing objectives, see chapter 2.
During step 2, you present the steps of the skill or the skill cues. To support skill development, we need to break down the skill into its critical components and then create cues to help students remember the steps. Creating memorable cues can assist students during your course and beyond - especially if you use mnemonics or other strategies to help the skill cues stick with the students. For example, we use the mnemonic skill cue I CARE with advocacy (Benes & Alperin, 2016):
- Identify a relevant and meaningful issue
- Create a health-enhancing position or message about the issue that is supported by facts and evidence and is geared toward the audience
- Act passionately and with conviction
- Relay your health-enhancing message to your audience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the advocacy effort
Step 3 is modeling the skill. For each skill, it is important for students to see the skill applied accurately and effectively. To do this, the skill needs to be modeled for or by students. During this step, you want to highlight the application of the skill cues so students can see the cues in action. There are many ways to model the skill - role-play, video clips, excerpts from books, or a guided example with the class. The most important things to remember are that your modeling of the skill is showing students how to apply the skill effectively and that the modeling provides an opportunity for them to identify the skill cues in action.
To introduce you to an advocacy campaign, we will watch a short commercial that aims to persuade drivers to leave the phone in the back seat. Before watching the commercial, you will receive a worksheet with the skill cues listed. During the commercial, you should check off the criteria that the commercial does well. Following the viewing, we will discuss the key points that made the commercial effective.
Step 4 is practice. This step is critical for successful skill development. During this step, students receive opportunities to practice the skill in relevant and realistic situations. As the teacher, you are a guide on the side who provides feedback that will help students perform the skill successfully. Practice should be aligned with educational outcomes identified in step 1.
Whenever possible, providing opportunities for student input and choice during practice can help increase engagement and participation. Students feel more invested in the outcome of their work when it is personalized to them. Also, if you provide practice opportunities within one skill but with different health topics, it will facilitate positive transfer across a variety of situations and settings. We know that transfer is enhanced when learning takes place in multiple contexts. In the skills-based approach, this occurs when students have the opportunity to practice one skill (the focus of the learning) within multiple health topics (the topics are the different contexts). Practice is the step in which students not only can develop their ability to perform the skill effectively but also can increase their self-efficacy in using and applying the skill to see how the skill relates to their lives. To go back to our example,
Let's put our knowledge of effective health advocacy to work. Your task is to work in small groups to create a one- to two-minute commercial advocating for a cause that it is important to you. Remember that you want to apply the skill cues here. You might want to refer to the checklist we used while watching the texting and driving commercial.
In step 5, you evaluate student performance using a summative assessment. The assessment and feedback should align with the educational outcomes presented in step 1 and should measure students' ability to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. Reinforcement refers to helping students see how they will use these skills in their lives. While feedback and reinforcement occur throughout the unit as students work toward understanding the skill, in the final step we want students to demonstrate their learning and to see how their learning carries over into their lives outside of the health classroom. In fact, over the course of your time with students, they will begin to see that every skill you cover in your health class is used nearly every day. The more we reinforce skill application in everyday life, the more our students will become confident and competent in their ability to use each skill to better their health.
We now have the opportunity for everyone to share their advocacy projects and to learn more about causes that are important to people in this class. Each group will introduce its video by sharing the topic the group chose, why it chose the topic, and what makes this topic important for teens to learn about. As we watch the videos, be prepared to provide feedback based on the skill cues. Remember that feedback helps us all improve!
Having students complete authentic, performance-based summative assessments allows you to measure the level of students' skill performance. This form of assessment requires students to demonstrate the skill - this is the performance aspect of performance-based authentic assessment. In authentic assessments, students demonstrate the skills in relevant and meaningful contexts. Provide prompts or tasks that are similar to situations and scenarios that students are currently experiencing or might experience in the near future. To evaluate the assessment, design a rubric that includes the educational outcomes that you identified in step 1. Also, include a measure of student performance of skill cues and consider including criteria related to the health topics covered in the unit. Make sure that the criteria align with the educational outcomes introduced in step 1 and that your practice opportunities help students improve their ability to address the criteria successfully.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Being a Health Reporter
Objective: Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
NHES Performance Indicators
Grades 6 Through 8
- Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
- Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).
Grades 9 Through 12
- Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
- Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).
Objective
Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.
Skill Development Step
Step 4: skill practice
Duration
45 to 60 minutes
Materials
Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.
Description
- Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
- Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
- Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.
Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.
Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"
This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.
Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)
Tips and Extensions
- Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
- After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
- You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.
Modifications
- Allow rewrites.
- Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.
Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
Planning and Implementing an Effective Health Education Curriculum
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum.
To ensure that your students develop the skills and knowledge needed to lead healthy lives, you must plan and implement an effective health education curriculum. This takes, among other things, planning for and consideration of developmental levels, student and community needs, and where your curriculum fits within the bigger picture of the district. (That is, have students had health education before your class? Will they have it after?) As discussed in chapter 1, a skills-based approach uses the skills of the National Health Education Standards as the foundation of the curriculum and integrates topic areas such as nutrition, alcohol and other drugs, and interpersonal relationships to help students develop the skills and acquire the knowledge necessary for maintaining or enhancing their health. This chapter provides strategies and tools for designing a skills-based health education curriculum.
Before we dive into specifics of curriculum design, let's take a moment to think about how well-designed learning experiences influence student outcomes. We will explore two scenarios that could play out in your classroom. In the first, you go into class having an idea of what you would like students to learn (although you have no specifically designed behavioral outcomes). You have thought about the information you want students to know and you design and teach your lessons in an engaging way to make sure they learn this new information. You create an assessment (near the end of the unit) to measure whether or not students can restate what they've just learned based on what you were able to cover in the lessons. Perhaps the assessment asks students to create a poster, make a presentation, or take a test. When students turn in their projects or their tests, you notice that they were able to include a lot of information on the topics discussed and their test scores reflect knowledge acquisition. Based on this information, you feel that students have retained information from the unit, and you hope that they will be able to use that information to make healthy choices.
Now we want you to consider a second scenario and notice the differences in both student output and transferability of learning. In this scenario, your curriculum and student learning experiences are predetermined. The learning experiences are created to support skill development while integrating the functional information and topics necessary for developing skills. You begin your unit by considering what your students need to know and be able to do. You consider the needs of your school, district, and community using data from a variety of resources - from state standards to school-based surveys. For example, suppose you have outlined your scope and sequence and are brainstorming topics to cover in the Analyzing Influences unit. While looking at Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data, you notice an increase in alcohol use among high school students. Based on a local survey conducted by guidance counselors, you also know that students are experiencing high levels of stress and are using alcohol as a way to deal with their stress. Finally, you know from conversations with the parent - teacher organization that parents are concerned about the online activity of students. Using all of these data, you find it important to focus your unit on analyzing the influences of stress in students' lives by identifying stressors, including technology, and discussing healthy ways of managing stress without turning to alcohol or other unhealthy options. You use this information to develop your unit objectives.
Next, you create an assessment that will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill proficiency and the extent to which they have met the unit objectives. After creating the assessment, you design your lessons in such a way that students will acquire the knowledge and develop the ability to apply the skill in a health-enhancing way and demonstrate their learning through the assessment. All the while, you make sure that you are teaching in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to students. By the end of the unit, students are able to demonstrate to you how to apply the skill while also using the information taught to them. You now have greater levels of confidence in your students' ability to use the information learned and apply the skill developed in a health-enhancing way. You also feel confident that students will be able to analyze other influences in their lives that might lead to unhealthy behaviors.
These two scenarios have fundamental differences. In the first, students are able to tell you what they have learned and have built up a knowledge base of health-related information. While some of the information will resonate with students, behavior change theory suggests that they are unlikely to retain that information over the long term, nor will they necessarily use that information in their daily lives to make health-enhancing choices. Knowledge is a precondition for behavior change; it sets the stage, but on its own will not lead to change (Bandura, 2004). Initially, the information might become a topic of conversation and even spark interest in learning about something else, but the information alone does not ensure that students have the ability to apply that information in ways that support or maintain their health.
In contrast, in the second scenario, the unit is designed to give students opportunities to develop the skill and apply the information learned during the unit. Through this experience, the students must use health-related information to support their application of the skill, with the information itself secondary to skill development. The assessment designed before the lesson planning and implementation helps to ensure that learning activities included in the unit align with and contribute to students' ability to meet the unit objectives. Not only does this help guide your teaching, but also it helps to set clear expectations for students - they know where they will end up before they even start! Also, as students progress through the lessons, they build on their ability to apply the skill so as they approach the assessment they are prepared to demonstrate the skill and apply the information in a meaningful way. After completing the unit, students have the ability to perform the skill, apply the newly learned information, and transfer learning to their daily lives.
This chapter provides you with strategies and ideas to set up your health education classroom (and curriculum) in a way that more closely mirrors the second scenario. We believe that students who participate in meaningful, well-designed learning experiences that focus on skill development are more likely to leave their health classrooms prepared to handle the challenges they will experience in everyday life.
Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.
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