Interdisciplinary Resources in the Classroom

As a physical education teacher for 6, 7, and 8th graders, I have a lot of curriculum I can cover throughout the year.  I tend to focus on body mechanics as students at this age are still growing into their bodies and mechanics guide them into understanding how their body works.  However, I do like to touch on eating right and how what they put into their body will affect their body's performance.  Below are 2 websites that I find extremely helpful. The chose my plate website is from the US Department of Agriculture and it touches on a variety of health items. What I like the best is the "My Plate" tab. I always the user to look at what are healthy options to put on their plate and design how they wish to eat. It is based on the food pyramid, but some what dumbs it down and adds more detail.

The second website is AMAZING. It has tabs for parents, kids, and teens. It can also be switched from English to Spanish.  It touches on everything related to being a healthy child or teen. There are question and answer sections about staying healthy, illness and injuries, feelings, etc.  It's important for students to understand that a healthy life doesn't just include doing push ups and mile runs in PE class, but it also requires them to stay emotionally balanced and this website allows them to explore.

Eating Right:

http://www.choosemyplate.gov/

http://kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/go_slow_whoa.html

Anatomy:

Another topic I like to get into is the human anatomy. Since I am teaching health for 6th graders, I don't go into depth on the muscular and digestive system, but I do like focus on the major bones and muscles.  Human anatomy is something that we do everyday by reciting the body parts or muscles I point to during warm ups and especially on fitness day work outs. This helps the students critically think about what body part they are activating while working out or playing games. Below is a great website that lists 10 websites for children that relate to the human body and anatomy. A lot have interactive games and ways to study/learn the body parts. They vary from more children oriented to adult based learning. 

http://www.squidoo.com/human-anatomy-kids


The challenges of teaching eating right is that often I find that students are really engaged in what is good food to put into their bodies, but they have no control over what their parents buy. Often I hear students essentially "calling out" their parents and they don't understand why their parents may or may not buy healthy foods. I am constantly telling them to ask for healthy foods and make healthier choices, but not to diss their parents.  It's especially hard working in Oakland where majority of the students come from low socioeconomic households and money is tight. However, providing the knowledge to the students I hope makes them second guess picking some pretzels or fruit over some flaming hot cheetos.

Responded To:
Jenn Arnold
Sarah Uhler
Betsy V.