Exemplary Lesson Plans
The following are two lesson plans that showcase some of the best work I have done as a teacher. Both of these lesson plans were created when I was a student in the Health Teacher Program at Lehman College. As an emerging health educator, one of my career goals is to teach young students the various ways that they can manage their health through diet and physical fitness. Although these are initial lessons for each topic, I strongly believe that they demonstrate my knowledge and desire to provide meaningful health education to students of all ages.
The first lesson showcased here is a lesson that I have taught as a physical education teacher many times in the gymnasium which made the delivery much easier. However when tasked with delivering the same information in a classroom setting, I did struggled just a bit because I wanted to make sure I could make it as interactive as possible while keeping it in the lens of a health education lesson. Despite the simplicity of the assessment attached to this lesson, I found that it assess student’s knowledge of the content taught in a quick efficient manner. The next lessons were designed to allow students more time to delve deeper into the content.
For the second lesson, I considered the importance of teaching students from a young age about nutrition and healthy food choices. It goes without saying that weight management is an important health skill that should be taught early on and I made the choice do so with this lesson on the MyPlate tool and the five food groups. The intention of the lesson was for students to become familiar with the Myplate tool and the food groups. The assessment attached to this lesson was designed to see if students could demonstrate a basic understanding of the food groups and how Myplate should be used. When I originally taught this lesson to my peers in graduate school, they suggested that I provide students with charts with foods labeled or illustrated. Being no artist myself, I found pictures in magazines, food circulars, and downloaded off of the internet to create these charts. Using these charts really improved the learning experience for my students and they were able to create meaningful Myplate pieces. I then had students bring them home and share them with their families as a means of introducing families to this nutrition tool. I knew that this worked when families reached out to me to learn more about it.
Lesson #1: Introduction to the Components of Physical Fitness
Lesson Objectives
1. By the end of this lesson, students will be able to list and define these four components of physical fitness (muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardio-respiratory fitness by matching the component with its definition.
2. Students will be able to identify an exercise or activity that will improve each component of physical fitness.
3. Students will demonstrate care, consideration, and appreciation for their classmates as they participate in a getting to know you “ice breaker” game.
Learning Standards
National Health Education Standards:
Standard 1: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.
Standard 7: Students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce health risks.
NYS Health Education Standards:
Standard 1: Personal Health and Fitness Students will have the necessary knowledge and skills to establish and maintain physical fitness, participate in physical activity, and maintain personal health.
Resources
Learning Activities
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Activity |
Description |
Objective(s) |
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Do Now: Health & Fitness Bingo (7 minutes)
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Students will participate in an opening ice breaker activity; they will activate prior knowledge and make personal and community connections by collecting names of classmates who can honestly identify with various physical activity statements on their bingo sheets.
During this activity I will be observing students to make sure that they are interacting politely and appropriately with their classmates. |
Students will demonstrate care, consideration, and appreciation for their classmates as they participate in a getting to know you “ice breaker” game. |
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Activity 1: Brief review of the benefits of physical activity and what exercise is. (2 minutes)
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Students will come back together so that I can review the benefits of physical activity.
I will first begin by revisiting the benefits of physical activity and that exercise is done on a daily basis with the purpose of improving muscular strength, cardio-vascular fitness, flexibility and muscular endurance.
I will ask students to share some of the benefits of physical activity (after I have asked 5-6 students, I will unveil the chart we created from the previous lesson that list the benefits of physical activity).
Students will then be asked to switch their seats so that they are sitting in the assigned groups (each bingo sheet will have a color written on it; this will let students know who they should be sitting with. Each group should have 4-5 students). |
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Activity 2: Introduction of the 4 components of physical fitness (10 minutes)
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Introduction to the four components of physical fitness.
After all students have moved into their color coded assigned groups, I will show students the list of the four components of physical fitness.
I will call on individual students to read each component; I will then provide students with a definition for each component.
These are continuous exercises that use the large muscles in our bodies to improve the function of our heart and lungs.
I will provide the following examples to help clarify their thinking.
These are exercises that you can do that will make your muscles stronger.
I provide the following examples to help clarify their thinking.
I will stress that we require a combination of both muscular endurance and muscular strength to get most physical activities done.
I will provide the following examples to help clarify their thinking.
I will provide the following examples to help clarify their thinking.
Formal assessment: After I introduce each component, I will ask students to stand and demonstrate an exercise, activity or movement that they can do that will improve that component.
*I will briefly discuss body composition and how it fits in as a physical fitness component. They will know that body composition is how are bodies are put together; that will all have bones, muscles and body fat. That when we work to improve the other physical fitness components we work to improve our body composition. |
Students will be able to identify an exercise or activity that will improve each component of physical fitness.
This will be a whole class activity in which all students will participate in. |
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Activity 3: Components of Physical Fitness Charade Game (6 minutes)
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I will explain to students that we will play a quick game of charades (I will briefly explain that when we play charades we pretend to do something and our friends have to guess what it is).
Each group will be asked to pretend to do an activity from their assigned fitness component. To facilitate quicker smoother game play I will provide each group with a list of exercises they can choose to demonstrate for the class (ideally some of these would be exercises or activities that they have done before in physical education class).
I will ask students to turn and talk to their group mates to choose 2 movements, exercises, or activities for the class to guess. We will then go around the room and each group will get a turn to “perform” for the class. |
Students will be able to identify an exercise or activity that will improve each component of physical fitness.
This will be a small group activity. |
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Closure (5 minutes)
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Briefly describe how you will close the lesson and help students understand the purpose of the lesson. (Interact with learners to elicit evidence of student understanding of purpose(s) for learning and mastery of objective(s).
Before completely wrapping up this lesson, I will briefly review with students each component; depending on time I will ask a student from each group to read their physical fitness component poster.
To wrap up this lesson students will be asked to demonstrate their knowledge by taking a pencil and paper assessment. |
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to list and define these four components of physical fitness (muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardio-respiratory fitness by matching the component with its definition.
This will be an independent activity |
Assessments
Formative Assessment: After I introduce each component, I will ask students to stand and demonstrate an exercise, activity or movement that they can do that will improve that component. The purpose behind doing this will be for me to check their understanding of the concept and to see whether or not need to further explain the concept.
Here is an example of the rubric that I would use to track student participation in class activities.
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Student Name |
Participated in all class activities; Ice breaker, and Charade game Total Points = 20 |
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All the time 10 Points |
All of the time Group Demo 10 points |
75% of the time 5 points |
75% of the time Group Demo 5 points |
Less than half the time 0 point |
Less than half the time Group Demo 0 |
The following page is an example of the paper and pencil summative assessment that is attached to this lesson.
Name: _______________________________
Date: ________________________________
Directions: Draw a line to match each physical fitness component to its definition.
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1. Aerobic or Cardio -respiratory Fitness
2. Muscular Endurance
3. Flexibility
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The ability to move your body or an object as hard as you can once. This is the greatest force that a group of muscles can make at least once.
The ability of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels to send fuel and oxygen to the body’s tissues during long periods of activity.
This is the ability to move your body or an object more than once without getting tired.
The ability to easily stretch, bend, and twist our bodies; these are movements that we can do every day that will improve our range of motion. |
Turn page over
Can you match the activity or exercise to its physical fitness component? Draw a line to connect the two.
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Muscular Strength |
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Flexibility |
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Aerobic or Cardio-Respiratory Fitness |
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Muscular Endurance |
These lists would be given to each group for the Components of Physical Fitness Charade Game
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Muscular Endurance
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Flexibility
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Muscular Strength
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Aerobic or Cardio-respiratory fitness
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Name: _____________________________________ Date: ________________________
Health & Fitness Bingo
Directions: On the go signal, walk around the classroom to gain as many different signatures for each statement on your sheet as possible before the activity ends.
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I have run in an organized race event. |
I can jump rope for at least three minutes without stopping. |
I eat at least one serving of raw vegetables every day. |
I like to play organized sports like basketball or baseball. |
I know how to swim. |
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I know how to ride a bike. |
I can do at least 5 different yoga poses. |
I like to play tag with my friends. |
I can bend and touch my toes. |
I exercise at least 4 times a week. |
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I know that I should get at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day! |
I exercise at recess every day. |
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Sometimes I exercise with my family. |
I can do at least 10 sit-ups on my own. |
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I participate in physical education every week. |
I can do at least 5 push-ups. |
I have swum in the ocean! |
I can hold my own body weight up off the ground for over one minute. |
I know how to do at least 3 different jump rope tricks. |
Lesson #2: Introduction to My Plate
Lesson Objectives
Learning Standards
National Health Education Standards:
Standard 1: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.
Standard 7: Students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce health risks.
NYS Health Education Standards:
Standard 1: Personal Health and Fitness Students will have the necessary knowledge and skills to establish and maintain physical fitness, participate in physical activity, and maintain personal health.
Resources
Provide a comprehensive list of all necessary materials including technology, print and non-print resources, and any other items.
Items available from https://www.choosemyplate.gov/printable-materials
Learning Activities
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Activity |
Description |
Objective(s): |
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Do Now “Healthy” lunch vs. “Unhealthy” lunch
3 minutes |
To engage students with the lesson, I will first show them a picture of an “unhealthy” lunch and tell them that this was my lunch from yesterday. Students will be asked to share what they notice in the picture.
Anticipated answers: too much food, too much junk, soda etc.
I will then show them a picture of my “healthier” lunch. Again I will ask them to share out what they notice about this lunch drawing their attention to the proportion sizes and food choices of the second “healthier lunch.”
I will explain to students that I used a tool called MyPlate to help me plan my “healthier” lunch. I will then show them the picture of the MyPlate Poster; and explain that I used this picture as a tool to plan my lunch.
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Objective(s):
Students will be able to identify Myplate as a tool to help individuals build a healthy meal. |
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Activity 1: Introduction to MyPlate
5 minutes |
Using the MyPlate poster I will explain that MyPlate is a tool to help us remember the foods we should eat every day.
As I show students the poster illustration of MyPlate I will ask them to describe what they see.
Questions that I will ask students as we are looking at the poster:
What do you notice about the different parts that make up the plate?
Are all the pieces the same size? Why do you think they are different sizes?
Which section is the largest? Which section is the smallest?
***The direction of questions will change depending on the student’s answers.
I will explain to students that today they will learn about MyPlate and how it is a tool that we can use to make healthy meals.
Questions will also be written on chart paper for students to see as well. |
Students will be able to identify Myplate as a tool to help individuals build a healthy meal. |
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Activity 2: Food Groups on MyPlate
10 minutes |
Each student will then get a blank MyPlate worksheet and pencil. John D. will get his large printed worksheet.
Still using the MyPlate poster/illustration as a point of reference; together as a class we will move from each section to the next.
I will say the name and color of each group on MyPlate. Using the poster/illustration students will be instructed to label each section as we move along.
What I will say:
The orange section of the plate reminds us to put grains on our plates. We should try to eat whole grains which have a lot of fiber which is good for our digestion.
The green section is for vegetables and it is bigger than the other sections. Who can tell us why this section is bigger than the rest? Vegetables contain lots of vitamins that are also good for our bodies.
The blue section is for dairy. What do you notice about this section’s size? Dairy foods contain calcium which is important for strong bones.
Do you notice that the fruit section is red and that the protein section is purple? So you also notice that they are almost the same size? Proteins help our muscles stay strong and fruits like vegetables also give us vitamins.
CFU (formative assessment): As I move through the sections I will ask students about where certain foods should go:
Thumbs up if carrots belong in the grain section; Thumbs down if you disagree.
I would check to see how many students are holding a Thumbs up or down.
Depending on the response I would modify the pace of my lesson, help clarify student thinking with the pictures of food, and continue to ask questions to clarify the thinking of my students.
Students will continue to see pictures of various foods to help clarify their understanding of where foods would go into each section.
As we go through each category students will be told to label each section accordingly again using the MyPlate poster/illustration as a visual guide.
CFU (formative assessment): I will ask students to hold up the worksheets so that I may check them to see if students are labeling them appropriately as we move from category to category. |
Students will label each food group section on their blank MyPlate worksheet. |
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Activity 3: Adding pictures
10 minutes
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After students have labeled each section they will be instructed to do the following:
Students will be instructed to draw 1 food item in each section of their MyPlate worksheet.
I will again inform them that MyPlate is a tool that can help guide us to make our meals healthy. It also tells us which foods belong in each category.
To help students better understand what the expectation is I will show students my example that I made before class started (a worksheet with one section labeled with a drawing of a food item).
Students will be asked clarifying questions to help clarify their thinking as they work.
***Another support for students will be to allow them to use the pictures that I have cut out before hand to help them draw their food items on their worksheets.
Nancy L. Will be allowed to glue the names and pictures to her worksheet. |
Students will draw at least 1 food from each food group on their blank MyPlate worksheet. |
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Closure
2-4 minutes |
Students will be told to complete their exit ticket question at the bottom of their page:
How can we use MyPlate to make healthy food choices?
I will work with Nancy L., privately; I will write her answer to the question.
I will popsicle stick call on 3 students for them to share their answers.
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Students will be able to identify Myplate as a tool to help individuals build a healthy meal. |
Assessments:
Name: _______________________________
EXIT TICKET QUESTION: How can we use MyPlate to make healthy food choices?
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