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Alli Ordaz
PPE 310: Health Literacy in Schools
Curriculum Map
Arizona State University

Introduction
I co-teach five class periods along with my Intern Mentor Teacher, Allison Walden, at
South Mountain High School in the Phoenix Unified School District. Together we oversee four
Junior Honors Classes and one regular Junior-level English class. All five of our classes range
from 31 to 35 students per class period. The honor classes are contracted with South Mountain
Community College and therefore our curriculum mirrors South Mountain Community College.
Below are mini Lessons that range between 5-10 minutes each and incorporate not only Arizona
state standards but a sleep mini-lesson, health mini-lesson, and an environmental/sustainability
mini-lesson. For each of these lessons students will be asked to show concrete examples and
skills that mirror what healthy choices would look like towards sleep, health, and environmental
sustainability. These mini-lesson also incorporate tech tools that will aide in visual understanding
as well as engagement.

Sleep Mini-Lesson
Purpose: To analyze healthy sleep times, patterns, and habits and create effective ways for
students to making healthier sleep choices; for example, receiving more hours of sleep, winding
down, or even eating less before bed time.
Standard(s): Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and
interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and
evidence and to add interest. (11-12.SL.5)
Materials: Prezi and poll everywhere
Methods:

Introduction into adolescents and sleep (5 mins.)

Explain ways students are not getting enough sleep- including distractions, homework,
unhealthy study/school habits that lead to less sleep, unbalanced social wellness, and
unhealthy sleeping habits- taking long naps, eating large amounts before school, and/or
watching television before bed.
o Have students complete Poll Everywhere Question for participation points; (1
min.) Students will answer the prompt question- How many hours of sleep do

you get a night? This is a multiple choice question

Introduction into Youtube video on students and sleep
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FG9mLXLdHU (3mins.)
o Give Students small post-it of one thing they picked up from the video
o Have the students get up and put post-it on the whiteboard
o Have Students then share and discuss what they found to be the most interesting
point(s) from the video. (2 mins.)

Health mini-lesson: Negative Effects of High Sugar Diet

Purpose: To introduce and describe the negative effects of a high sugar diet. Class and instructor
will discuss the various stages of how sugar enters and works in the body. In addition, students
will learn how sugar effects the bodies of adolescents and therefore how sugar effects
functioning within the school day. One example being: after lunch students tend to be more
lethargic and then get short bursts of energy and eventually crash. This is a typical case of how
sugar effects students.
Standards: Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their
development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to
produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text. (11-12.RL.2)
Materials: Student access to internet (throughout the classroom all students have designated
assigned computers). The computers will be useful in using the www.supertracker.usda.org
tool. Pen and paper or a word processing document
Methods:

Instructor will start with opening questioning and ask for prior knowledge on the effects
of a high fat/high sugar diet. Students will then be asked how many times a day they

consume high processed fatty/sugary foods and/or fast foods. (2min)

From here students will be instructed to go to the super tracker website and create a
profile. Students will then be asked (by show of hands) whether or not they have created
a profile successfully and then be instructed to enter in what they consume on a daily
basis. (4)
o From here, as students are logging on, starting a profile, and entering in their
foods, the instructor will handout various articles on different diets and exercises
from popular media magazine articles.
o There will be annotation on the magazine articles showing comparisons and
contrasting elements. This will be where students are able to identify and describe
the differences- the BIG IDEA being there are multiple resources to show what

better eating/health choices students can make. (4 mins.)

Conclusion: At the end of the lesson students should have recorded what they ate (on a
daily basis), also read magazine articles on how to make healthier choices, and students
should have expressed what they consume, at the beginning of the lesson. In closing,

students will share one thing they could change about their diet; being graded for
participation on a rubric scale.

Environmental/Sustainability Mini-Lesson
Purpose: A recycling mini- lesson serves as a perfect break up between the monotony of normal
lessons and helps to describe to students the small things they can do to be more conscious of
materials students use on a daily basis. This specific lesson will allow for students to start to
think about how they can recycle basic material that are used in and out of the classroom.
Standards: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas,
concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization,
and analysis of content. (11-12.W.2)
Materials: Pencil, highlighter, Crossword Puzzle handout, and over-head projector
Methods:

Recycling and being more in tune into how we use products, dispose of them, and things
like how much we consume are all things that we should think about. In this mini-lesson

students will do a brief crossword puzzle and then go onto a brainstorming exercise
The crossword puzzle will have a key and contain complex words like sustainability,

consumerism, geothermal, and compost. (4 mins.)

From there students will start a brainstorming exercise; Instructor will pull up pictures of
water, oil, stratosphere, lithosphere, biodegradable items, plastic, and trees and students
will write down certain words that come to mind. Example Picture of Plants, student
could write down water/oxygen. (3 mins.)

Final exercise will consist of showing students what tools and resources exist at South
Mountain, that make recycling possible. Showing them where recycling bins are in the

2015-2016 Calendar
South Mountain High School
Ms. Ordaz Curriculum lessons and
Mini-Lessons
August
Aug. 21 First Day of School
st

September
September 1st- Sleep mini Lesson
September 8th- Diet Mini Lesson
September 15th- Environmental Mini
Lesson
October
Oct. 5 -6 Reading Conferences
th

th

November
Nov. 12th-14th Thanksgiving Break
Schedule
Mid-term
New Reading Lists Assigned
December
12-4 Final Exam Schedule
2016 School Year Begins
Curriculum TBA

school. This helps students to understand that recycling is something that students can do
every day.