A Long Walk to Water Lesson in Health Enhancement

The scene from A Long Walk to Water that I want to talk about and connect to my content area of health enhancement comes from Nya’s perspective with the struggle that her and her family went through on a daily basis just to get water.

The strategy I would use with my students is the “popcorn review” method. I think this would be a very effective method because it would get my students talking and building off of each other’s comments. I would break my students up into groups of 3–4 people per group to help keep the conversation going. Then I would start off the review with a simple statement to get these rolling. I might start off with something like, “Water is a hard commodity to come by, how does Nya’s story prove this?” Then I would let my students build the conversation from that point, helping it along when need be.

Now, this review strategy would just be a building block to get to our actual lesson. The actual lesson itself would involve some physical activity, being a health enhancement class and all. What the lesson would entail is being out at the track. What I would be doing is showing my students a sample of what these people have to go through on a daily basis. What they would do is walk around the track carrying an empty plastic container, around a 3–5-gallon container. After walking four laps, 1 mile, they would fill their container up and then have to walk four more laps back. This would give the students, a very small sample size of what these people have to do everyday just to survive.

After we get done with this activity, we would regroup and comment on what it was like and how it feels. Then we would talk about how this compares to Nya’s daily struggle. Her treks were much longer, rougher conditions, no shoes, and was for true survival.

This would all go along with the following health education content standards (9–12):

· 23. Determine the accessibility of products and services that enhance health;

· 4. Analyze how environmental factors and personal health are interrelated