Backward Course Reflection

This semester I learned some new techniques on how to implement a variety of health topics into a curriculum for elementary and middle school grade levels. Health education is an important topic to teach young kids because they need the skills and knowledge to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I learned that there are six different domains of health that young children should be informed about. One domain of health is physical health. Physical health is related to the health of the body. The health of the body can be influenced by personal behavior, toxins in the environment, and medical care. The second domain of health is mental/intellectual health. Mental/Intellectual health is related to the mind. The ability to recognize influences

Backward course design is a technique that starts the lesson by teaching the learning objectives of the unit and then working backward to develop assessments and learning activities. An example of a backward design would be to teach students a way to prevent the common cold. First, the students will learn the objective of the unit. The objective or learning outcome of this unit would be for the students to be able to describe and demonstrate different ways to prevent the common cold. Next, the students will be assessed to demonstrate that they learn the information. Then the students will participate in activities to establish the knowledge they learned. I believe that the backward design is a sufficient way for students to learn course objectives and demonstrate to the teacher that they were able to retain the

School connectedness is the students believing that the adults and their classmates care about their learning and about them. School connectedness is a protective factor that significantly assists with academic success and health risk cutback. Some ways of cultivating school connectedness are by relations with parents, in the classroom and throughout the school. Parents and teachers can establish a great partnership and that would help with school connectedness. Parents can support learning inside of the home after school, they can keep in contact with teachers often to work with teachers on helping their child learning process. Parents that are involved with their children learning often have children that are excelling in assignments and test. Teachers can help with establishing classroom connectedness. In the classroom, teachers can conduct activities that can promote an inviting learning environment, develop connections between classmates, and encourage sociability between students and teachers. Some activities include icebreakers, snow cones, time to move, and four corners. I believe that school connectedness is very important in schools. Children should be supplied with a great support system that wants to see them achieve in school and in daily activities. Establishing school connectedness can help children be more active in the school and develop new relationships with peers, teacher and staff, and