The Dimensions of Wellness are made up of several components that help guide balanced living. Introduce your students to the 8 Dimensions of Wellness using a variety of teaching strategies that will keep your students engaged and moving as they learn all about them.
Set
- Place students into small groups and either give each group a bag with all of the examples within it, or project the slide of the bag and it’s content onto the screen. Either way, have them brainstorm answers on a piece of paper or on white boards. After a set amount of time, ask them to set aside their answers and ask them what they think the topic of the lesson will be about. Hopefully, they figure out it has something to do with health and/or wellness. If not, you can tell them.
- Tell students you will revisit their brainstormed answers to the contents of the bag in a bit, but in the meantime, you want to introduce them to the dimensions of wellness.
- Begin, by cutting apart and shuffling the wellness cards and their descriptions. Randomly pass them out and have students circulate the room and try to find their match. If you’d rather, you can also place students back into their small groups. Give each group a set of cards and have them match up the areas with its description.
- Go over the matches and have students fill in the information on the notes form. Examples will be added later.
- To reinforce this information, show students one or both of the following YouTube videos. Video #1 is titled, The Eight Dimensions of Wellness. Video #2 is titled, The 8 Dimensions of Wellness. Students can add examples to their notes form while viewing.
Materials
- Projector & Screen
- Bags and Contents for Intro Activity (optional)
- Bags and Contents for Mystery Bags
Activities
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- Teachers–you will need to get 8 bags for the Mystery Bags and number them. Cut apart the picture cards/clues that correspond to each dimension and add them to the bag. If you intend to use this activity more than once, I recommend you laminiate the cards to help preserve them.
- Set the bags randomly around the room and give students 3-5 minutes per bag to figure out which area of wellness is being represented by the mystery bag clues. Students will record their answers via bag letter/# on the ANSWER sheet and may refer to their notes and resources for help if necessary.
- Go over the answers when students are finished to see how accurate they were.
- Assign students the Wellness Self-Assessment and corresponding exit prompts to complete. You can decide how you want to handle the assessment and whether you just want to discuss them or have students turn them in. At the very least, you can discuss and/or collect the exit slip prompts.
- Revisit the initial survival kit activity. Ask students to reevaluate their responses. Give them a set amount of time to discuss and either keep or change their initial responses. Go over their brainstormed answers and then give them the actual answers.
- The final assessment comes in the form of Wellness Scenarios. Students read through the scenarios and identify the area of wellness being described. Collect for a grade.
Attachments
- NOTE: Please make copies of each of the activities before assigning to your students and/or editing. To do so, go to file, click make a copy and you’re good to go!
- Survial Kit Image
- Areas of Wellness Cards for Match Activity
- Area of Wellness Notes Form
- Area of Wellness Mystery Bag Clue Cards
- Directions and Notes Form for Mystery Bag Activity
- Wellness Self-Assessment & Exit Prompts
- Survial Kit Analysis
- Dimension of Wellness Scenarios
