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Being a Health Reporter

This is an excerpt from Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education With Web Resource by Sarah Benes & Holly Alperin.

NHES Performance Indicators

Grades 6 Through 8

• Analyze the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.8.1).
• Access valid health information from home, school, and the community (indicator 3.8.2).

Grades 9 Through 12

• Evaluate the validity of health information, products, and services (indicator 3.12.1).
• Use resources from home, school, and the community that provide valid health information (indicator 3.12.2).

Objective

Students will be able to apply and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the selected health topic.

Skill Development Step

Step 4: skill practice

Duration

45 to 60 minutes

Materials

Worksheet: Two-page document in advance with six text boxes containing the initial questions. This is shared digitally, with students typing into the box, saving, and returning the document online.

Description

• Provide students with a series of questions written in the style of an email or tweet from a peer. Questions should relate to a particular health topic area (you could also use this with other NHES skills - see example that follows). Students must access valid and reliable resources in order to answer the questions in the form of a magazine or newspaper article, and they respond in their roles as health-literate journalists.
• Responses must be detailed and use health-literate language. The response must include the valid and reliable resources that were used to research the article. Students also should submit an evaluation of the resources used to justify their validity and reliability. Award 2 points for each question and require two good pieces of information to earn those points. Also, award points for their justifications.
• Students may write in any style but some of the best responses come from those students who get into character and write like a journalist.

Example: Eighth-grade class looking at National Health Education Standard 5, Decision Making.

Q1 - @confusedteen tweets: "When should I make a decision on my own, and when should I seek advice? #confused"

This question is related to the performance indicator 5.8.3: Distinguish when individual or collaborative decision making is appropriate.

Include as many questions as you wish that allow students to show what they know. (We suggest using six questions and encouraging full sentences and extended answers, when appropriate.)

Tips and Extensions

• Seeing examples of good work from previous classes allows students to understand what is being asked of them from this task. Informing students that the best responses might be displayed, printed in a magazine article, or shared on social media (with permission) usually raises the standard of the finished product.
• After returning the graded material, have students get together in groups and rewrite the perfect answers for each question based on teacher feedback. This could be used as a script for a public service announcement or podcast recording.
• You can use this as a formative or summative assessment. You can use the end product for further extension work.

Modifications

• Allow rewrites.
• Ensure that the language used in the questions accommodates the reading levels of all students.

Modified from a submission from Andy Milne, high school health teacher in Illinois.

Learn more about Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education.

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