Builds Personal Competence, Social Competence, and Self-Efficacy by Addressing Skills

Description: An effective curriculum builds essential health-enhancing skills that enable students to build their personal confidence, deal with social pressures, and avoid or reduce risk behaviors. Essential health-enhancing skills included in the National Health Education Standards¹ and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT)² are

• Analysis of internal and external influences,
• Assessment of valid and reliable health information, products, and services,
• Communication skills (e.g., refusal, conflict resolution, negotiation, and expressing feelings),
• Decision-making,
• Goal setting,
• Self-management, and
• Advocacy.

Health skills are critically important to teach in every health unit that is taught at each grade level. The goal for school districts is to teach every health skill at least two times, in two different health content areas, at every grade level. Therefore, it is important for curriculum  directors and health teachers to be purposeful and thoughtful about which skills to include in each health content area and at each grade level. Several questions should be answered when making these decisions.

• Which skill(s) will be most likely to help students adopt the selected Healthy Behavior Outcomes (HBOs) in the unit?
• How many lessons are dedicated to each health topic that is taught?
• What is the developmental level of the students?
• What skills have already been taught at this grade level in other units?
• What health skills are being taught at each grade level for each topic that is taught (scope and sequence)?

Once decisions have been made regarding the health skills to be included in each health content area at each grade level, teachers may find the HECAT helpful. The HECAT includes a list of priority skill expectations to further delineate the health skills for each grade level span (e.g., K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12) (HECAT Skill Expectations).

For students to be successful in mastering a health education skill, lessons need to include the following instructional developmental steps:

Step 1:   Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills.

Step 2:   Present steps for developing the skill. 

Step 3:   Model the skill.

Step 4:   Practice and rehearse the skill using real-life scenarios. 

Step 5:   Provide feedback and reinforcement. 

 When teaching a health skill, all these steps are imperative. It isn’t adequate to introduce the skill, present the steps of the skill, and model the skill. If students don’t have multiple opportunities to practice and apply the skill and receive feedback, it is unrealistic to expect students to master the skill.

Example 1

The unit being taught is Promoting an Alcohol- and Other Drug-Free Lifestyle, and the HBO for the lesson is AOD-2: Avoid the use of alcohol (HECAT Appendix 3).

Note: The focus of this example is decision-making.

1. Step 1: Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills. The teacher starts the lesson by telling the students that they will be learning about making healthy decisions related to using alcohol.
   1. The teacher asks students the following questions:
      1. Have you ever made an important health-related decision?
      2. Why is it important that you make healthy decisions related to alcohol?
   2. The teacher then tells the students that they can learn how to make healthy decisions to avoid the use of alcohol.
2. Step 2: Present steps for developing the skill. The teacher provides the students with a worksheet that includes a template with the steps of decision-making. The teacher and the students discuss the questions associated with each step of decision- making:
   1. Is this a situation that needs a health-related decision?
   2. Do you need help to make a healthy decision?
   3. How do your family, peers, technology, media, and culture influence this health-related decision?
   4. What are the options and potential outcomes of this health-related decision?
   5. What is the healthy choice for this health-related decision?
   6. What is the outcome of this health-related decision?
3. Step 3: Model the skill. The teacher uses an alcohol-related scenario to model the steps of decision- making.
4. Step 4: Practice and rehearse the skill using real-life scenarios. The students work with a partner to practice the decision-making steps related to avoiding the use of alcohol by completing the worksheet.
5. Step 5: Provide feedback and reinforcement. The teachers and students then discuss the completed worksheets. The teacher provides feedback and reinforcement to the students using these methods:
   1. Asking the students why it is important for them to make decisions to avoid the use of alcohol
   2. Encouraging students to seek help from trusted adults when making decisions to avoid the use of alcohol
   3. Encouraging the students to make healthy decisions to avoid the use of alcohol
   4. Asking the students about their confidence related to making health decisions to avoid the use of alcohol

Example 2

The unit being taught is Promoting a Tobacco-Free Lifestyle, and the HBO for the lesson is T-4: Support others to be tobacco free (HECAT Appendix 3).

Note: The focus of this example is advocacy. This activity should be implemented after students have learned the benefits of being tobacco free and the negative consequences of tobacco use.

1. Step 1: Discuss the importance of the skill, its relevance, and its relationship to other learned skills. The teacher starts the lesson by showing the students an age-appropriate example of a video, poster, or other artifact advocating for a healthy behavior.
   1. The teacher then asks and discusses with the students the following questions:
      1. What does it mean to advocate?
      2. What is the healthy behavior that the creators of this artifact (video, poster, or other) want people to do?
      3. Do you think the creators of this artifact were persuasive in getting people to participate in this healthy behavior? Why or why not?
      4. Today we are going to work on our skills to advocate to others to not use tobacco. Why is it important that we encourage others not to use tobacco?
   2. The teacher then tells the students that they can learn how to advocate for others to be tobacco free.
2. Step 2: Present steps for developing the skill. The teacher shows the students a poster with the steps to advocacy. These steps include
   1. Giving facts to improve the health of others,
   2. Stating personal beliefs to improve the health of others, and
   3. Persuading others to make positive health choices.
3. Step 3: Model the skill. Next, the teacher models the skill by creating, showing, and discussing with the students a poster or other artifact that the students will create to advocate to their peers to be tobacco free. Examples of other artifacts to advocate to others include T-shirts, videos, sidewalk chalk talks, and bookmarks.
4. Step 4: Practice and rehearse the skill using real-life scenarios. The students then work in small groups to create and then persuasively share with their classmates the posters they created to advocate to their peers to not use tobacco.
5. Step 5: Provide feedback and reinforcement. The teachers and students discuss the posters and the presentations of the posters. The teacher provides feedback and reinforcement to the students using these methods:
   1. Leading a class discussion in which the students provide feedback related to each group’s poster and presentation of its poster
   2. Providing specific feedback to each group about their poster and their presentation of the poster
   3. Asking the students why it is important to advocate for others to engage in healthy behaviors, such as not using tobacco
   4. Asking the students about their confidence related to advocating for others to not use tobacco

To see in PDF format, please click here.