What is the Lesson Planning Tool?

The HealthSmart Lesson Planning Tool allows teachers to select HealthSmart lessons in particular content areas that address specific skills and support desired healthy behavior outcomes.

It is based on two powerful documents that define key content, skills and outcomes for health education.

The National Health Education Standards set performance indicators around the essential knowledge (Standard 1, Comprehending Concepts) and skills (Standards 2 -8) required for adopting and maintaining healthy behaviors. The Lesson Planning Tool shows you the particular skills covered within your selected content area(s) and lets you choose the ones you wish to address.
The CDC’s Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT)was designed to guide curriculum selection and development. It builds on the characteristics of effective health education curricula and the National Health Education Standards by identifying the knowledge and skill expectations that will support healthy behavior outcomes (HBOs) for students at various grade levels. The Lesson Planning Tool groups the HealthSmart lessons according to the content areas defined by the HECAT, and allows you to choose which HBOs you wish to address within your selected content area(s).

The Lesson Planning Tool:

Eliminates hours of lesson planning.
Combines healthy behavior outcomes and skills to achieve real, measurable success.
Creates a flexible, responsive plan tailored to the number of health class periods available.
Generates results that correlate to the CDC’s Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT) and the National Health Education Standards (NHES).