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Teacher Tips—What Works!

Teacher tips are tried and true teaching strategies developed by health education teachers around the country. Take a look at some classroom activities that really work, then share some of your own!

Beginning the Year with Social and Mental/Emotional Health

Patricia A. London, D.Ed.
Bermudian Springs Middle School

As we begin a new year, I teach my eighth-grade health classes about social and mental/emotional health first. This includes bullying, being responsible, time management, and self-esteem. A culminating project for my eighth-grade students is to create a booklet on any of the aforementioned topics for our new fifth-graders in the middle school. Many of the fifth-graders are timid and worried about moving to our building. This project is meant to help the fifth-graders be successful, and provide them with a buddy they can turn to during the year.

This finished product is graded (I use the performance assessment and rubric from a booklet provided by Glencoe) and then given to a fifth-grade language arts class where the fifth-grade students read the booklet and write a response to the ideas, tips, and hints. The teachers and I have found this a wonderful way to do cross-curricular work and give meaning to writing. The eighth-graders feel responsible for the younger students and enjoy helping them be successful in the middle school.

We have presented this idea and booklets to the school board and received their enthusiastic support.

Call for Articles

As a teacher, you have a unique perspective on teens in the health classroom. Contribute your thoughts on school-health–related topics to the Glencoe Health and Fitness Update e-newsletter. We‘ll provide the Web space for you to reach other teachers, share ideas, and open a discussion to talk about the needs of teachers in today’s health classrooms.

Send us your short (25 to 100 words) classroom tips and ideas, or develop an article (100 to 500 words) for publication in Teacher Tips—What Works! that we can publish in the next issue. Just click on Feedback/Contact Us link or send a note to submissions@glencoehealthnews.com to reach the editor and let us know what works in your school or classroom.