Aloha!

Welcome to the first blog post by Central Public School’s ¾ class, we are the health buddies! Our names are Bethany and Luzha and we’ve been having a wonderful time planning lessons and interacting with our class since October. Originating from the wonderful university of Queens, we are both in third year and have smoothly been accepted into the circle of ¾-dom thanks to Bethany’s long blonde hair and my ( Luzha’s) on/off wearing of glasses, truly stimulating topics for our buddies.

            Our focus in the classroom has been on topics like healthy eating, nutrition and maintaining physical activity in order to stay healthy and fit. This has involved leading discussions about Canada’s food guide, the four food groups and doing activities like drawing healthy and balanced meals. We have been working in conjunction with the ¾ Health and Science teacher and much of our activities have been complementing nutrition lessons that have been taugh. We reinforce concepts in easy and fun ways, for example we played nutrition jeopardy in class today.

            Our last lesson introduced food nutrition labels and we played a matching game with everything that can be found on a label. It was a fun way incorporate their previous knowledge on labels and introduce some new concepts like calories, saturated and unsaturated fats! Can you think of something more fun than knowing how healthy your snacks from Metro are? We DEFINITELY CAN’T ! And our buddies felt the same passion for these topic as us.

Our next class is shaping up (currently in the planning process) to be just as thrilling and informative

Luzzi and Beth!

Hey there! 

 My name's Megan & I'm a third year health and psychology student here at Queen's! Since joining QHO in October I've been hard at work preparing lessons, practicing teaching and starting up teaching lessons in a combined 6/7 & 7/8 classroom at Frontenac Public School. Along with two of my colleagues (Kayleigh and Ron), I've been heading into FPS once a week since the middle of November - we've been having fun and learning how to living healthy! 

Last week we did a very basic overview of Substance Abuse focusing on the knowledge the students already had.  We began with a discussion on illegal, legal or substances that became legal at a certain age.  We then looked at specific substances and categorized them.  We spent a large portion of the class playing "Substance Abuse Bingo" which involved substance names, or ways of administering drugs.  After each word was called students categorized it and told us any information that they already knew about it.  This helped us all familiarize ourselves with the terminology.  Class ended with the question box.

This week we focused on the definitions and differences between Use, Abuse, Addiction, Tolerance, Withdrawal and Overdose.  We worked in six discussion groups.  Each group was given a word that they had to define and provide examples of.  One student would present this to the class and then the PE's would elaborate.  We moved onto a scenario activity.  Groups were given 10 different scenarios and had to discuss whether this depicted USE, ABUSE or ADDICTION; we then presented and discussed.  The rest of the lesson involved discussions between the PEs, teachers and students around Prescription Drug Abuse and Steroids with connections to the media, celebrities and sport.  Class ended with the question box which gave GREAT feedback.

In the next few weeks we will be delving further into the general topic of substance abuse, with specific lessons dedicated towards illegal substances and their effect on the body and differences between them.

I'll keep you posted!

Megs