During my practicum, my inquiry will be addressed slightly different, as the classes I am teaching will have already completed their active health unit, (a unit for six to eight classes focusing on the components of fitness.) However, I plan to incorporate other areas of health literacy within my lessons, testing the effectiveness of mini-lessons at the start of the class work, focusing on topics that would work in the class such as learning about heart rate, blood pressure, and mental health issues/strategies to cope, before moving onto the daily PE lesson. One specific example I am going to use on my practicum is a lesson on the health benefits of physical activity, specifically its benefits on stress management and anxiety control. I will begin the lesson by having the students fill out a short survey commenting on their mood, and their stress and anxiety level on a scale of 1-10, (10 being the most stressed.) Students will then go about their PE class like normal, and will participate as they normally do in the regularly scheduled unit. At the end of the class, approximately 5-7 minutes before the bell, students will then fill out the same survey they began did at the start of the class, testing whether or not they felt less stressed or if their mood had changed. Myself, as the teacher, will then give them a short lesson on how physical activity can have a profound effect on de-stressing individuals, and the release of energy to the body during exercise can allow individuals to feel less stressed and in a better mood throughout the day. As stress management will be a topic covered under PE due to the implementation of the new curriculum, this strategy could be used to effectively teach the positive effects of physical activity in regards to stress management in a short time frame to avoid taking away from the active portion of the students PE class.
An additional form of integrating the new curriculum into a PE class would be to take subjects usually taught in an Active Health unit and transfer it directly to a regular PE class. This takes away the time needed in a library doing research and gets the material across to students in an active way. My main example is to teach various concepts of heart rate before a regularly scheduled class. Students would learn in a short lesson about heart rate (HR), resting heart rate (RHR), target heart rate, and max heart rate (MHR), before moving onto the lesson. They would take their RHR prior to the class, calculate their max heart rate and target heart rate, and wear a heart rate monitor throughout the class. They could then directly see what their heart rate is, how fast (or slow) it climbs, and try to reach their target heart rate. This would then be discussed in short at the end of class, tying it directly into how it affects exercise and physical activity. Instead of taking up a PE class in the library or classroom, students would simply learn the material within a PE class.
Below is a sample lesson plan I will use in a grade ten PE class, where the mini lesson on stress management will be incorporated into a class during the volleyball unit. As well, below is a link to a lesson plan I will use in a grade nine PE class, incorporating the concepts of heart rate directly into a PE class that would normally be taught during an Active Health unit.