Overview
First-grade students in SFUSD engage in 20 Health lessons per year. Lessons are created from the HealthSmart curriculum and correspond to SFUSD monthly health themes. Elementary health education strives to improve health outcomes for youth and their families by teaching the knowledge and skills necessary for life-long healthy choices. We view comprehensive health education as a rite of passage for all students.
Priority Standards
What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer Health understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.
In First Grade focus on these critical areas:
Describing how humans grow and naming major body parts
Explaining and applying ways to stay healthy
- oral & personal hygiene practices
- sun safety
- prevention of disease & germ transmission - hand washing, covering coughs & sneezes
Identifying and explaining safe and unsafe practices
- identifying labels on products
- distinguishing safe & unsafe touches and using refusal skills
- explaining the use of seat belts & sitting in the back seat of a vehicle
- defining conflict resolution techniques
Instruction: Signature Elements
Below are signature elements of SFUSD Health instruction that students should experience regularly throughout first grade as they develop health literacy.
Create an Information-Rich Environment
Provide meaningful, health-related text on classroom walls and well-stocked, inviting, and comfortable libraries that contain a range of health-related texts (e.g., nutrition and physical activity, social and emotional learning), including texts in students’ home languages.
Promote Inquiry & Autonomy
Allow students to generate their own questions and to choose health-related activities, texts, and even locations in the room in which to engage with health-related books, manipulatives, and tasks independently.
Make It Relevant
Ensure that health education experiences are relevant and responsive to students’ interests, everyday life, or important current events.
Emphasize Collaboration
Structure frequent opportunities for students to collaborate with their peers in health-related group learning tasks, to read and discuss texts, and in creating artifacts that demonstrate their learning.
Materials
First Grade HealthSmart Lesson Slide Decks
Units & Planning Guide
Lessons are created from the HealthSmart curriculum and correspond to SFUSD monthly health themes. Harvest of the Month lessons correspond to the availability of the produce at local farmers’ markets. To meet the required 20 health lessons per year, we recommend at least three lessons from each health topic. Health lessons are not available in Spanish.
**Lessons will continue to be added as they are developed
Unit Overview as Document for First-Grade Health
Reflection Questions
- How are students' developmental needs, communities, and experiences being reflected and honored, or how could they be?
- What opportunities do you see for developing equitable access & demand, inquiry, collaboration, and assessment for learning?
- What are the implications for your own practice? What strengths can you build upon? What will you do first?
Want More?
Standards
More Resources
- Slideshow with info on Teaching Sensitive Topics: Puberty, HIV, Gender, LGBTQ+
- Safe Touch and Sexual Harassment Prevention resources
Contact the Health Team
This page was last updated on May 10, 2023