Communicating Health for Student Decision Making

One of the articles that recently caught my attention was published under the The New York Times blog for Education. There was a lesson plan for grades 6 through 12 submitted, entitled:

The Care and Feeding of Kids: Finding Information on Nutrition and Fitness

By Catherine Hutchinson and Holly Epstein Ojalvo

Creating a lesson plan can be a user-friendly approach to communicating evidence. In this case, the lesson covers several components of the curriculum, including Health Education and Language Arts. This appears to be an effective communication strategy to support research in the area of obesity and is readily implemented into teaching.

As an example, the warm-up for this lesson instructs the teacher to make five bubbles or circles on the board, with the headings "health," "nutrition," "weight," "diet" and exercise." Students are then paired and asked to write those messages within their own journal. They will write one "lie" or myth about the statement e.g., a diet myth about saturated fat or cholesterol. Later, the students are invited to share their falsehoods, compare and react to others in the class.

This exercise also encourages critical thinking skills through investigation and disseminating of the evidence to stakeholders, including teachers, parents and students. Ultimately, these formats for engaging students, communicating current health topics, that affect government policy (e.g., Michelle Obama's program to reduce childhood obesity) are effective in that they make the search findings actionable. Teachers have a unique set of skills and contribute significantly to the health mindedness of students; helping to shape their opinions and make informed decisions. Finally, the teachers will be able to measure some element of learning through the lesson plan, with the ultimate goal of improving the student decision making.