Saying Good-Bye to Boring Health Classes

When you think back to when you were in school, elementary, middle, and high school, do you really remember much that happened in health class? Most likely not, unless you had an amazing teacher. You either want to be or are currently a health teacher because you love teaching the kids what any other teacher does not teach them. You teach them about life. Some of the health classes these days are so boring and dreadful for kids, that they do not even want to learn. Health can be so interesting, fun, and informative but teachers opt out of that direction and take the easier route. This is the traditional way where you tell the students to take out their textbooks, read a chapter or two, and answer the questions you handed out to them in a packet. Can you say boring? Kids, no matter what class they are in, do not learn to the best of their abilities when reading and writing down answers. They need to be involved, talking, and interacting. This article will hopefully shed some light on how to accomplish this task.

When the students come in for class, either have a small activity for them to do or a question to respond to in a journal. This activity or journal entry should have some relevance to the lesson being taught for the day. This will get them focused and thinking about topic.

Always have some main activity in the lesson as well. There are at least one hundred main activities in which you can have your students be involved. Some of these activities include: re-creating board games, interviews, discussions, decorating bulletin boards, writing letters to companies, creating projects that help the community, poems, debates, puppet shows or skits, making videos, and the list just goes on and on. These are awesome and easy ways to grade your students as well. It does not matter if these take up more than one lesson. As long as the student.s are having fun and learning in a safe and controlled environment, that is really all that should matter.

It is not always the activities that make or break your lesson. Sometimes my teachers, when I was younger, had great activities but never acted enthusiastic. So that just made the class even more boring. This part is all on you and the way you address the class. Never have the same monotone voice throughout the whole lesson. There should be some animation to it. Talk quietly then talk louder. Maybe even use some funny accents when telling a story or dress up as a character for certain lessons. Even though you may feel somewhat silly doing this, the students will absolutely love you for it. Nothing is better than having a kooky health teacher.

Taking your health lesson to the next level may require more prep time on your part. However, it is worth it in the end and after the first year of all that extra preparation, then the next years to come will be a breeze. Your health lessons will never be boring again and you will have students that cannot wait to come back to your class.