Content Area: Career Education and Consumer, Family, and Life Skills
Index: 9.2A Grade 8 CPI 5
Standard: 9.2 - Consumer, Family, and Life Skills
Strand: A - Critical Thinking
Cumulative Progress Indicator: 5 - The student will practice goal setting and decision-making in areas relative to life skills.
Grade: 8
Sample Activities:
· Brainstorm and discuss types of housing in which people live. For each of the following, define the type and list two advantages and disadvantages of each:
1) Single family home
2) Duplex
3) Apartment
4) Mobile Home
5) Prefab Home
6) Condominium
7) Other
Look at a map of your community and mark where various types of housing are located. Why are the types in certain areas and not others?
· Students complete a home questionnaire. Includes the following types of items:
1) Describe the type of dwelling place that you live at the present time (single family home, apartment, etc.)
2) List other types of dwellings where you have lived.
3) What type of dwelling place do you prefer and why?
4) Do you prefer your dwelling place in a rural, suburban, or urbanization? Explain you answers.
5) List the needs that you prefer have met in your dwelling place.
6) List the wants that you would like in your dwelling place.
7) What are your responsibilities in maintaining your living space?
8) Which is your favorite room/area in your dwelling place? Why?
9) What do you dislike in your living space? Why?
10) What do people notice most about your own living space? What makes it your own unique spaces?
11) Does your dwelling space meet the needs of your family? If yes, tell how. If no, explain, why not.
· Define the following terms:
1) Aesthetic needs
2) Environmental needs
3) Economic needs
4) Social needs
5) Personal needs
6) Technological needs
7) Wants
Thinking about your current home, describe how various rooms/spaces meet each of these needs
· Write a one-page essay about your personal living space and what it says about you personally. Describe what frustrated you about the space. Describe something you'd like to do to the space to make it more you.
· Students create a four column table in a spreadsheet or word processing program. The titles was the columns are Time, Food Item, Amount, and Food Group. Insert about 30 rows in the table. Under the 1st column, Time, list Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Snack as lines with additional lines under each. Students record the time they way and what the items eaten where and the amount of food, using current dietary requirements list food group in last column. Determine if enough foods were eaten from each food group. What more is needed in the diet? In what areas is there too large a consumption? Discuss how excesses or deficiencies might affect a person's overall health and well being. Segments of the video, Supersize Me, might be used to lead a discussion. A computer program might also be used to analyze the diet for a day.
· One of the food groups often missing from the diet is enough fruits and vegetables. Why aren't these eaten? Are there foods that can be substituted? Why is French Fries the number one vegetable eaten in the U.S.?
· Examine the school lunch menus for a month. Examine the nutrient content using a computer program. Are some menus better than others? Why or why not? What government regulations are there on school breakfast and lunch programs? Prepare a multimedia presentation to present to the principal, food contractor, and school board on the needs of students and how well a healthy diet is being provided through the current program.
· Create a case study where the students are given a goal to reach such as a new car or a trip after graduation. Students should research the cost of this item and factor in expenses such as graduation expenses, insurance costs, social events, etc. Students should then determine how much money they will need to earn and save in order to reach their goal. After students have made this determination, they should create a list of does and don’ts that will assist them in reaching the goal. At the conclusion of this activity, the students should discuss how realistic the goal is and how each student has decided to meet the pre-established goal.
· WELLPOWER - Write the words environmental, inherited and behavioral on the chalkboard. Explain that these three categories sum up the major influences on one’s health and well-being. Divide the class into three groups and assign each group one of the categories. Each group develops a concept map or chart for their assigned factor, noting actions that contribute to wellness related to their category. Students should include the following subcategories: fitness, nutrition, personal health behavior and hygiene, stress management, safety, and sexuality. After reconvening the groups and discussing actions that contribute to wellness, each student selects one action item and develops a plan that he/she will personally try to accomplish. For example, a student might write: “I will try to exercise at least three times per week for at least 30 minutes.” Students indicate in the plan the reason they chose the action and justify how they will make the choice become a change.
Variation: After identifying factors that contribute to wellness, each student develops an action plan for his/her own wellness, identifying a goal, any obstacles to reaching that goal, steps that support the achievement of the goal, and a reward for its achievement.
Variation: Invite an adolescent health specialist (e.g., physician, nurse practitioner) to discuss factors that contribute to adolescent wellness. The speaker should address the most common reasons why young teenagers use health services and identify any new requirements or recommendations for young adolescents, such as hepatitis B immunizations or the chicken pox vaccine.
· DARE TO BE 100 - Brainstorm attitudes about senior citizens. Explain that the process of aging is very misunderstood. Older citizens may be treated differently depending on the cultural background of the family. Students develop a plan to achieve old age entitled “Dare to Be 100.” Students list at least 20 suggestions to help them achieve the “ripe old age” of 100 years. Students consider ethnic and hereditary factors in the development of the plan.
Variation: Invite a panel of adults at various life stages to speak to the class
about ways they stay young and healthy.
Variation: Students interview senior citizens about the positive things in life
that have kept them active and healthy and ask them how they deal with the
changes and problems of aging.
Variation: Students shadow a senior citizen for a typical day and write a
journal outlining his/her activities. Compare the day’s events with the
stereotypical perceptions of “A Day in the Life of a Senior Citizen.”
Variation: Interview a local citizen who is at least 100 years old. Plan a life
celebration, hold the event, and record the day’s events on videotape.
· CHECKLIST 30 - Develop a 30-item list of various fitness test items (e.g., one-minute jump rope, flexed arm hang for time, sit and reach). Over a designated period of time, students complete all thirty tasks, recording a score for each on the checklist. At the end of the circuit, each student identifies three areas of success and three areas to improve upon.
Variation: After students have identified their needs and successes, organize
groups with similar needs. Each group discusses ways to improve their fitness
score for the identified activities. Using this information, the group develops
a plan to improve, works together to achieve their goals, and monitors group
performance until the next fitness test.
· MINI FITNESS CIRCUIT - Divide the class into groups of five students. Assign each group a health-related fitness component. Each group develops several tasks aimed at improving one area of health-related fitness and selects one activity to demonstrate to the class. As the rest of the class participates in the activity, the group monitors their performance. Each student selects one activity he/she likes best and writes a plan, including goals, to improve personal performance.
