Building & Managing the safe & Positive Learning Environment

Building & Managing the safe & Positive Learning Environment Lecture #4 CHS 485

Outline: Fostering Connectedness Instruction organized with a specific focus on health issues Interdisciplinary instructional approaches Classroom interactions Using Electronic Resources In Health Education

Strategies To Improve Academic Achievement And Student Health What are the most challenges confronting Education & schools Nowadays !

School engagement = School bonding Instead of focusing efforts on reducing the risks associated with behaviors including physical inactivity, tobacco or other drug use; significant reductions in such risks can be achieved by supporting protective behaviors that put children away from risks. Protective factors include individual or environmental characteristics, or behaviors that help students reduce the effects of stress, increase their ability to avoid risks, and enrich their social and emotional competence. Fostering Connectedness

Fostering connectedness serves as a buffer between youth and the harmful effects of negative situations. Cultivating school connectedness Cultivating parent-family connectedness Fostering Connectedness Cultivating student-student connectedness

A- Cultivating School Connectedness - Defined as the belief among students that adults and peers in the school care about their learning and about them as people. - They like school, they have friends, and that their teachers are supportive and believe that policies & practices are fair and effective. - Students who feel more connected to school are less likely to: • Smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and participate in sexual intercourse. • Carry weapons and involve in violence. • Be injured from dangerous activities. • Have emotional problems, suffer from eating disorders, and experience suicidal thoughts and attempts.

A- Cultivating School Connectedness • In order to enhance school connectedness amongstudents, teachers should: • Encourage students to engage in extracurricular activities. • Build strong and positive relationships among students and their teachers, administrators, custodians, coaches, counselors…etc, are the key to promoting school connectedness. “People connect with people before they can connect with institutions”

B- Cultivating Parent-Family Connectedness • Researchers have concluded that strong & productive family relationship is fundamental for improving academic achievements and promoting healthy behaviors (Acts as a protective factor).. • Parent-family connectedness is the strongest of all protective factors against emotional distress,eating disorders and suicidal thoughts and attempts.

B- Cultivating Parent-Family Connectedness • In addition, to such feeling of connectedness, the home environment plays an important role in shaping specific health risks, Also, the health behaviors in which parents participate have been linked to health risks among youth. • Teachers can support parental involvement by providing assignments that parents and children can complete together at home.

Strategies and actions for parents and other caregivers to establish or maintain connectedness between families, students, and schools: B- Cultivating Parent-Family Connectedness • Encourage your child to talk openly with you about their needs and worries. • Attend school meetings and reading information that is distributed. • Communicate with teachers to discuss your child’s academic progress and accomplishments. • Help your child with homework activities. • Provide a space and the tools for students to do school work at home.

C- Cultivating Classroom Connectedness • A great deal of time is devoted to helping educators organize effective ways for students to engage with learning materials: texts, curriculum, online resources whereas how students interact with each other is largely ignored ! • All students must feel safe, be skilled at communicating both self-respect & respect for others, understand classroom rules and procedures, and celebrate academic success they and their classmates experience.

Icebreakers: • Activities that promote a safe & positive learning environment into regular classroom practice. • Trigger activities that can provide a bridge to or between instructional issues. • Icebreakers are designed to: 1- reinforce an “inviting” learning environment.2- cultivate connections between learners.3- foster approachability with the teacher.4- can be planned to introduce a topic or particular content to follow.

Instruction Organized With A Specific Focus On Health Issues After promoting connectedness, schools usually organize contents and instructions into discrete segments or disciplines. A Discipline is “a specific body of teachable knowledge, with its own background of education, methods, and areas of focus” Jean Piaget. There are countless instructional activities and learning strategies that can be adapted to address a wide range of health issues and diverse target audiences.

It is common for elementary schools to organize instruction into focused content areas (discrete academic disciplines). Advantages Of Direct Instruction Delivery In Teaching: • Parents, teachers and students are familiar and comfortable with it. • This approach is consistent with courses of study, standards, and testing protocol. • Teachers are academically prepared as content specialists and equipped with a limited range but a great depth of expertise within a given discipline. • All content areas, including those perceived to be of less importance, are afforded a portion of formal instructional time. Direct Instruction Delivery In Teaching

Limitations Of Direct Instructional Approaches: • Fragmentation of instructional time:Teachers are forced to structure learning activities within time boundaries rather than responding to developmental needs of students. • Does not formalize learning experiences that will capitalize on students’ abilities to draw relationships between or across issues. • Students are reinforced to work against one another to accomplish personal goals (reinforce competition). • Students face difficulties in making connections between new concepts and pre-existing knowledge.

Classroom Interactions Direct instructional approach can involve several ways of teaching,where students can interact in a classroom: The competitive model The individualistic approach Cooperative learning Students compete for recognition as the best. Learning in small groups within which students must collaborate to achieve shared goals. Students work toward meeting set criteria, depending on their own performance without the influence by other students.

Cooperative Learning: An Instructional Alternative Working together to achieve a common goal results in: Higher achievement and greater productivity than working alone. Students will care about each other & be more committed to success & wellbeing of classmates. Students experience greater psychological health and higher self-esteem than when competing with peers. Diversity among students becomes a source of creative enrichment. Makes each individual group member stronger by learning in collaboration with others. Cooperative learning requires students to be responsible for their own and their group mates achievements.

There are differences between traditional learning groups and cooperative learning groups. Cooperative Learning Groups & Activities are Organized Around Elements: Cooperative Learning: • Interpersonal and small-group skills:teachers must teach students essential skills required to be an effective group member, e.g. Everyone contributes and help, everyone listens carefully to others and quiet voices are used during discussions. • Group processing: discuss how well the group is functioning and make suggestions for improvement. • Positive interdependence:ensured through assigning mutual goals, providing joint rewards and dividing tasks, materials, resources and information among group members. • Face-to-face interaction:students seated in close physical proximity are supported in mutual discussions. • Individual accountability: individuals are responsible for doing their part, i.e. Individual student’s achievements are not compromised.

Cooperative Learning: It’s unlikely that Cooperative model will completely replace the more traditional, or competitive, classroom approach, Butcooperative learning approach helps diverse groups of students benefit from both formats when used as an instructional supplement.

Individualized Instruction: Individualized approach is less common instructional format. It’s used to provide a supplementation to more conventional educational approaches. Advantages of individualized instruction: • Individualized instructional approaches can enrich interactional practices. • A better way to meet the need of students with learning or developmental disabilities.

1- Learning Centers: A learning center consists of an organized sequence of student-centered activities, each of which increase functional knowledge, develops essential skills and helps students examine their attitudes or beliefs about a health topic. Students at a learning center are active, independent, and can process information in the context of their personal experiences or understandings.

Students work simultaneously but independently on self-selected tasks. (Parallel Play) 1- Learning Centers: • Learning centers designed to promote student health, provide extended time for in-depth exploration of health concepts.

A Well-designed Learning Center Can: • Organize resource materials for students. • Encourage students to work independently. • Respond to individual learning pace. • Incorporate both independent and collaborative activities. • Supplement or reinforce basic instruction. • Provide opportunities for applying higher order thinking skills. • Combines a well-organized structure with freedom for independent thinking and creative expression. • Provide opportunities for peer-based learning.

2- Health Fairs: A health fair or health carnival can be an exciting, useful trigger or reinforcement activity when it is incorporated into the health education course of study. Health fairs provide opportunities to teach health concepts in a hands-on, fun, creative and exciting way. The purpose of health fairs is to stimulate interest in health issue and to expose participants to a variety of developmentally appropriate health issues in a compressed period of time.

Incorporating Health Fairs In A School Curriculum: 1- Health fair can be organized for elementary students by college students enrolled in health education classes. 2- Can be integrated into the academic program by having students in the upper grades develop learning centers and organize health fairs for their primary-grade counterparts. 3- Middle grade students can organize a health fair for parents in the local community. 4- A group of students can organize a health fair for other students in their own school.

Interdisciplinary Instructional Approaches • If students learn by making connections, then educators must explore ways to teach through formalizing connections among concepts. • Definition:A view of knowledge (curriculum) that formally applies information, beliefs, and skills from more than one discipline to a problem, topic, theme or experience.

The growth of knowledge in fields that fall between the confines of traditional content areas. • Fragmentation of the school day and associated time management problems. • Concerns about the relevance of many issues in the school curriculum. • The preparation of students to manage complex tasks that will confront them as adults. Importance of interdisciplinary approach:

Practices of interdisciplinary approaches A- Correlated Health Instruction B- Integrated Health Instruction: Thematic Units

Using Electronic Resources In Health Education Computers provide access to challenging and enriching learning experiences for students of wide-ranging abilities. The goal of using technology in health education is to help students live, learn and work successfully in a world that is increasingly complex and influenced by computers.

Evaluation of Web-based resources: Objectivity Accuracy Authority Usability Currency

Evaluation of Web-based resources: • Authority with regard to the topic (Who is responsible for the site?): • Who is the author of the site (individual, institution, or organization)? • What are the credentials, expertise, and experience of those responsible for the site? • Is contact information available for those responsible for the site (name, e-mail address, other information)? • Dose the URL type suggest that the site has a reputable affiliation (.edu, or educational; .org, or nonprofit organization; .com, or commercial enterprise; .net, or internet service provider; .gov, or governmental body; .mil, or military)?

Evaluation of Web-based resources: 2. Objectivity (Is the purpose or any particular viewpoint of the site made clear to users?): • Is there a statement of purpose or scope of the site? • Is an intended audience identified? • Is the information that is presented primary or secondary in origin? • Is information on the site presented as fact or opinion? • Are the criteria for including content on the site clarified for users? • Is any sponsorship or underwriting made clear?

Evaluation of Web-based resources: 3.Accuracy (Is the information on the site evidence-based?): • Does the site contain evidence that the facts and other information are well documented and researched? • Are facts and information posted on this site consistent with those in print or on other online sources? • Do links that are provided connect to other quality resources?

Evaluation of Web-based resources: 4.Currency (Is posted information up-to-date?): • Does the site contain current information? • Are pages on the site date-stamped with the latest update?

Evaluation of Web-based resources: 5.Usability (Is the site well designed and stable?) • Does the organization of the site seem logical and make the site easy to navigate? • Is the content of the site readable by the intended audience? • Is information free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors? • Do users have ready access to the institutional or organizational home of the site? • Is the site readily accessible? • Do pages on the site load quickly?

People born between 1946 and 1964 are referred to as: TV Generation (passive learning) • People born between 1965 and 1976 are referred to as: Generation X (highest education level) • People born between 1977 and 1998 are referred to as: Generation Y or Net Generation (grew up using computers). • People born since 1999 are referred to as: Generation Z (the first generation who have seen their parents embrace technology that is so common in their lives) American users of technology

Extra Shots References • Telljohann, Susan Kay, Cynthia Wolford Symons, and Beth Pateman. (2001) Health education: Elementary and middle school applications.New York: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 2 and 3. • The Centre of Disease Control (CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/hecat/pdf/HECAT_Overview.pdf • Journal of School Health. Homework Activity: - Select a health_related website and based on what we have learned in this lecture, you are asked to evaluate the site .. - In two minutes, present one slide of a captured website and summarize your evaluation ..

Best! “ Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. “ —Francis of Assisi

Building & Managing the safe & Positive Learning Environment