This month my students
worked a variety of components of healthy living: safety, lifestyle, healthy eating, and not making unhealthy choices (drinking alcohol).
We started out by watching
Nate’s video on Healthy Living at the beginning of the month. He touched upon eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and exercise, but really focused on safety items that each first grader could do to. He explained by making safe choices, they could avoid being
hurt and therefore stay healthy. He spoke of ways my first graders could easily make safe choices such as always buckling their seat belt, wearing a helmet when they ride their bike, and tying their shoelace so they don't trip on them (I was really happy to
hear him telling them this this as learning to tie their shoes is continuing project with many of my first grade students). After his video we brainstormed different ways to be safe and the students made a google slide identifying one way to be safe and imported
a picture and colored their background. Next we learned about healthy eating, the food groups, and the food pyramid. The students independently made a slide talking about the food groups, importance of eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and limiting
unhealthy foods, and imported a background image onto their slide. We then learned about the importance of exercise and not only does it makes you fit and stronger, but well oxygenated blood getting to your brain helps you to think and learn better. The students
again independently made a slide with what they learned about how exercise helps you be healthy, and selected and imported a background for their slide to go with what they wrote about.
We
then studied the FAAR lessons on alcohol and their effects on a young person's brain. This was an area that did require quite a bit of scaffolding and modification for the first graders. I began by talking about how our whole body is connected by thin threads
called nerves. When they bend their finger, their brain is sending the message along the nerves to the muscles in their finger, telling the finger to bend. Their brain also has
neurotransmitters
(like nerves)
that pass information between the different parts of the brain. When they eat healthy and exercise the
neurotransmitters
work well, but if a young person drinks alcohol, the neurotransmitters
slow down and don't pass messages to their body or brain as well. We then watched the FAAR videos and had lessons on alcohol's affects on the cerebellum, hippocampus, and cerebral cortex. At the end of each video and lesson I had the students write on their
whiteboard how they thought that specific area of the brain we had learned about would be affected by alcohol. For cerebellum they summarized alcohol's affect could cause them to fall; the hippocampus would be affected by them not
remembering
of forgetting things; and the alcohol could affect the cerebral cortex resulting in changing their feelings and making them being sad or angry. We did an interactive writing lesson to plan out the information about how alcohol can affect the parts of their
brain (in first grade language), and why young people should not drink. Each student keyed in their slide and then selected a 'no drinking alcohol' background to insert.
They
healthy lessons this month helped my students learn about healthy eating, lifestyles, and safety, as well as why they should not drink.
The children were very clear, even when we began that "alcohol is bad for kids", "only grownups are allowed to drink alcohol because it can make kids sick". They lesson helped them to develop some understanding that their brain has different parts and how alcohol can affect them. It also helped them to develop an understanding about neurotransmitters and how they pass information to different parts of the brain, and how alcohol can make them slow down. Overall healthy living not only helped my kids to focus on ways to eats, exercise, be safe, and avoid alcohol, it helped them to develop an understanding of how their whole body works together and how healthy choices not only make them stronger, it makes them have more energy, better able to focus and learn, and feel better
Below is a link to a slideshow that has all of my students slideshows on healthy living and how alcohol affects a young person's brain.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G5s_ZTi4fDwZOR5_Dti1Lm2yYsphEl5l2ZxNl-J_fn8/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=3000
The
state common core standards that were addressed in the lesson are:
RI.1.2
Retell information, including key details..
RF.1.1 Demonstrate understanding
of the organization and basic features of print.
a. Recognize the distinguishing
features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation).
W.1.8 With guidance and
support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
L1.2 Demonstrate command
of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Additionally, we met many of the technology goals the district as as each student made a small google slideshow with pages on safety, healthy lifestyle and eating choices, and how drinking alcohol is an unhealthy lifestyle choice due to its affects on parts of their brain, and a summary page of why they think it is important to be healthy. The students were able to independently write, import images and background and I was really please with the finished projects that they made.
