Ask a physical education teacher if they “teach gym.” You will often find an abrupt response, clarifying that they teach in the gym but they teach physical education. I mention this to get quickly to my point which is simply that words matter. In particular, vocabulary words matter. They do not matter as a random …
Continue reading What’s the Word? Vocabulary and Its Role in Your Classroom
Hey there! As a health teacher at Chestnut Hill Middle School, I’ve had the chance to work with some amazing students and watch them grow, learn, and figure out the many things that make up their health—both social, mental and physical. It’s a fun, but sometimes tricky time in their lives, right? With everything going …
A few years ago, I was teaching my favorite reproduction activity to a class of middle school students. We walked through a “normal” 28 day menstrual cycle, showed ovulation happening around day 14 or 15, and talked about what might happen if sperm were present in the fallopian tubes at the same time as an …
In a recent assignment, my students identified the benefits of comprehensive sexuality education, and their research discovered this quote from Siecus, prompting us to have a conversation about the role of language in the #HealthEd classroom, how it has changed, and how it can make a classroom more inclusive. I asked my students to consider …
Our teaching spaces should be as inclusive as possible so that all of our students see themselves in the curriculum, and feel safe and respected, as teachers model the behavior and language that they expect from all present. In the health classroom we no longer talk about male and female condoms, replacing those dated terms …
Sometimes the subtlest of changes in your language can have an effect on your teaching, the classroom environment and the eventual outcomes. I used to ask "Any questions?" and now I ask "What questions do you have?". A simple change from a closed question to one that, sometimes with 'wait time', can elicit a more …
#slowchathealth 