Seventh Grade Curriculum Resources
Standard of Learning
7.3 The student will investigate and analyze the various factors that guide an individual's decisions about health and wellness. Key concepts/skills include:
- the types of advertising techniques used to influence adolescents' decisions;
- the validity of information from different resources;
- family practices and customs.
Understanding the Standard
The student will understand the need to develop a process to validate the reliability of health information derived from different sources.
Essential Knowledge and Skills
The student will:
- brainstorm sources of subjective health information. (friends, advertising, etc.)
-
brainstorm sources of factual health information:
- nonfiction books on nutrition, fitness, science, medicine, etc.;
- reliable media sources;
- the Internet;
- community, state, and national agencies and non-profit organizations; (American Heart Association, Centers for Disease Control, Health Department, etc.) and
- scientific studies.
- determine how to validate the reliability of information on the Internet. (contains a logo or reliable source of information such as the American Medical Association)
Sample Lessons
The Educator’s Reference Desk: Lesson Plans> Health>Consumer Health Lesson Plans>Magazine Ads and You, the Teenager
Advertising is often aimed directly at young people. Not only do they spend $70 billion a year, but they influence their parents' purchases also. Youth are hit by certain appeals - appeals to be like everybody else, sex appeal, even negative appeal. This activity is to increase student awareness of persuasion tactics as seen in magazine advertising.
Sponsor: The lesson was developed by a teacher at Daly Middle School, Lakeview, OR. The site is part of the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM). GEM is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites. GEM is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.
Contact: http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi
Free
Kellogg Special K Ads
This lesson helps students understand the relationship between body image and marketing by exploring the Kellogg’s Special K “look good on your own terms" advertising campaign. Students begin by reading about this award-winning, controversial campaign which uses humor to skewer traditional advertising stereotypes about thinness. Students will deconstruct a series of Special K ads and discuss how marketers target “ideal beauty" messages to both men and women. Students will also look at the differences between the different marketing campaigns for Special K that have been used with Canadian and American women.
Sponsor: Media Awareness Network
Contact: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources
Free
Macmillan McGraw Hill Lesson Plans and Activity Sheets Cybersmarts Identifying High Quality Sites
Students learn that, because anyone can publish on the Web, they must carefully evaluate the sites they use for research. They review evaluation criteria and use a checklist to "grade" informational sites. Students will learn how the ease of publishing on the World Wide Web may affect the usefulness of some sites' content. Students will interpret the criteria on a site evaluation checklist and apply the checklist to a site, evaluating its usefulness. The activity sheet may be downloaded in PDF format.
Grades 6-8
Contact: http://www.cybersmartcurriculum.org
Free
Magazine Ads and You, the Teenager
Grades: 6-8
Advertising is often aimed directly at young people. Not only do they spend $70 billion a year, but they influence their parents' purchases also. Youth are hit by certain appeals - appeals to be like everybody else, sex appeal, even negative appeal. This activity is to increase student awareness of persuasion tactics as seen in magazine advertising.
Sponsor: Ask Eric
Contact: http://www.eduref.org (select lesson plans – health – consumer health)
Free
Media Literacy Lesson Plan: Recognizing Propaganda—Unreliable Testimony
After completing this lesson, students will be able to: Recognize the importance of personal hygiene and grooming, demonstrate health advocacy skills in an original advertisement and apply the media literacy skill of recognizing unreliable testimony to an ad for a hair care product.
Sponsor: Glencoe & McGraw-Hill
Contact: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/health/teachres/lessonplans/mlshampoo.shtml
Free
MedlinePlus: Evaluating Health Information
Filled with tips on how to evaluate health information. This well organized web site links the reader to reliable resource, for instance the NLM and NIH Guide to Healthy Web Surfing, the Federal Trade Commission Health Claims on the Internet: Buyer Beware and American Psychological Association Watch for Commercial Influences. Sponsor: National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health
Contact: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
Free
New York Times Daily Lesson Plan>Diagnosing Delusions: Debunking Common Medical Myths Through Education
In this lesson, after reading a background article from the New York Times, students learn how widespread medical myths can be potentially dangerous. They then synthesize their knowledge by creating pamphlets that help patients learn the facts behind some commonly believed medical myths.
Sponsor: The New York Times in partnership with the Bank Street College of Education in NYC.
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons
Free
The New York Times Daily Lesson Plans. Bigger Than Life, But Not Necessarily Better
Evaluating Images of Health in American Society: A Science Lesson
In this lesson, students examine where one develops his or her views about health and ways in which different products promote specific ideas of what should be seen as healthy. Students then investigate different ways in which people alter their bodies to become more like the "ideal"' picture of health promoted in American society and assess the marketing of dolls, action figures, and nutritional supplements, focusing on the images of health that they present.
Sponsor: The New York Times in partnership with the Bank Street College of Education in NYC.
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons
Free
Selecting and Using Health-Care Products
This Web site offers a lesson plan entitled “Selecting and Using Health-Care Products". Registration is required in order to access the lesson plans.
Sponsor: Health Teacher
Contact: http://www.healthteacher.com/lessonguides
$100 for all teachers in a school to access the middle school lesson plan.
Additional Instructional Resources
- Center for Disease Control – http://www.cdc.gov
- Consumer Products Safety Commission – http://www.cpsc.gov
- Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Kidd Safety - http://www.education-world.com/parents/health/safety.shtml
- Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation -http://www.fda.gov/cder
- HealthFinder Current and Timely Information - http://www.healthfinder.gov
- Health Web - http://healthweb.org
- How Quackery Sells – http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics
- Internet Detectives - http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/detectives
- Journal of the American Medical Association
- Medical Library Association - http://www.mlanet.org/resources/userguide.html
- National Institutes of Health – Over-the-Counter Medicines -http://www.nih.gov
- National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health - Medicine Safety - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
- National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health – http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
- Quackwatch, Your Guide to Health Fraud, Quackery, and Intelligent Decisions - http://www.quackwatch.com
- Six Types of Advertising - http://www.smalltownmarketing.com/sixads.html
- Types of Web Advertising - http://www.pr2.com/webads3.htm
- United States Postal Service - http://www.usps.gov
- World Health Organization
Assessment Ideas
The student will:
- explain how to validate the reliability of information on the Internet.
- assess the validity of health products and service information from three different sources.
