103 Extension Ideas for Health Skills
Hello Reader,
A common problem among educators is figuring out what assignments to give to students who finish assignments early, especially long-term projects. In today's newsletter, I'll show you how I used the concept of Depths of Knowledge and the artificial intelligence tool Magic Schools AI to help solve this problem.
Here's a quick summary of what I did:
- I input the National Health Education Standards into a Magic School AI tool.
- I compiled the results for each standard
- I used one of the ideas to create a one-class extension activity for the skill of advocacy.
If you want to jump to the free resource, click the big blue button at the bottom of this email. Read on for more information!
As I begin a new trimester with a new group of students, I want to make sure I have different extension opportunities for my students to work on if they finish their work early. Creating extension opportunities can be time-consuming because of the number of units covered across grade levels and because I want to go beyond students just doing work for the sake of doing work. My default activity is to have students create skill practice scenarios for me to use in future trimesters, but I want students to expand upon the skills we cover in a way that could transfer outside the classroom.
When Magic Schools AI launched a new feature that generates questions based on a provided standard for each of the 4 Depths of Knowledge Levels, I was intrigued. What do I mean by Depths of Knowledge (DOK)? I found this graphic by Erik Francis helpful in understanding the different levels. Here's a summary from ASCD:
I knew these could be beneficial, and it made sense to use the four levels to think about extension activities. For my input, I copied the general standards from the SHAPE America National Health Education Standards. I didn't use performance indicators, although I could have. You could also type in the specific objectives from whatever unit you're teaching. I was looking for blanket ideas and, as a result, now have 103 initial questions and ideas that can be transformed into extension activities. You could use this for your functional health content, too.
Use this resource as a jumping-off point for your own lessons. This isn't limited to extension activities, either. You could use these ideas to develop formative or summative assessments, skill practice opportunities, or choice boards.
| Click Here to Access a Free PDF With 103 Extension Ideas​​ |
Oh, and here's another free link showing an example of what I put together using one of the suggestions. I'll probably change this moving forward and add specific success criteria, but it's what I initially came up with for my seventh-grade students who finished their projects early. Feel free to make a copy and modify it to suit your own needs.
Thank you for reading! Do you want to see something specific covered in a future edition of my newsletter? Reply to this email and let me know! I'll be back in your inbox in January with emails about the following topics:
- Free Human Sexuality professional development resources that I've found helpful
- How to add the Skill Development Model into a pre-written curriculum (think Common Sense Media, Erika's Lighthouse, 3 R's, etc.)
Enjoy your winter break!
Jeff B.
P.S. If you take a look below, I've set up a referral program. By referring new readers to this newsletter, you can earn free rewards. I think I have it all set up correctly. I appreciate your support!
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Jeff Bartlett is a middle school health education teacher in Massachusetts, where he's been teaching since 2008. The 2021 National Health Education Teacher of the Year, Jeff started Level Up Health Education to help other health educators improve their craft. Want to work with me or support this newsletter?
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