Health Education and ALWtW

While teaching my high school Health Education class a lesson on First Aide, I will use a scene from the book “A Long Walk to Water” for students to apply what they learn about my lesson to the book. The scene in ALWtW is in Chapter 5 where Salva and other men are stung by bees multiple times. Bee stings, insect bites and other injuries someone can obtain outdoors is an essential lesson in Health Education. This lesson will start out with me using Presentation Software, from TLWT ch 5, informing students on basic first aide while outside. My presentation would include multimedia, such as short videos, demonstrating what to do when bee stings or insect bites occur. Along with this I will use many slides going through step-by-step first aide that students will be able to ask questions about and have small discussions on.

Oral communication will be the start of the interactive lesson. After my presentation, I will put students into groups and allow them to share personal experiences with bug bites or stings. Each student will discuss what proper care for each situation would have been. Along with this, I’d have scenarios up on the whiteboard where each group would come up with a plan to properly address the situation. This activity is all about teamwork and communication. They are taking prior knowledge and applying it to examples I’m providing them.

Switching over to reading and writing activities is where the scene from ALWtW comes in. While transitioning to the book, I will use the routine Read-Write-Pair-Share from 50 Strategies to support my lesson. Students will start by reading chapter 5 to themselves. They will then write individually any impressions or reactions to the text that have connections to first aide. Students will then get into partners or groups and share what their impressions were and how they can relate the text to our health lesson. As a class, everyone will then discuss what ways Salva can treat his bee stings and ease the pain. I will require my students to go into depth about possible outcomes from the bee stings, how Salva knew they were bee stings, what precautions to take in order to avoid bee stings in the future, and what aftercare methods could be used.

This lesson is falls under grades 9–12 Health Education Standard 5: Demonstrate the ability to use decision making skills to enhance health. The subcategory of this standard is: Evaluate the effectiveness of safety and health-related decisions. First Aide is meant to meet safety needs of an injured person. In this lesson, we take real examples, such as Salva’s, and assess the injuries to formulate a plan of action. Along with standards, this lesson also connects to The American Experience within the Grand Challenges. Health Education is an extremely important topic for today’s generation. Living the the healthiest life is essential to everyone, therefore health education is a tool that needs to be used to implement healthy living. The American Experience involves so many different parts of life and personal health can connect to this. In the book, Salva’s bee sting situation was a part of his living conditions and ways of life. Students in my health class can connect all of these things together in order to find a deep understanding of First Aide.