Theme: As a teenager, you are responsible for the decisions you make today. The decisions you make today will affect your choices for tomorrow
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Overview: In this unit, students will examine the responsibilities that develop through adolescence and into adulthood. Students will investigate how their decisions and behaviors affect their personal health and social relationships. Personal health consists of one's physical and emotional health. Social responsibility elicits one's duty to his or her community. It emphasizes the importance of student ethics and civic duty to one's school and country.
Objectives:
Using the Internet, students will examine the effects of drug use and how promiscuous sexual behaviors affect their physical health.
Time Estimate: nine weeks, two to three 90 minute classes per week
Using technology, students will explore how their emotions affect their personal relationships.
Using technology, students will produce a photo essay that explores their relationships within their family.
Using technology, students will define and portray what friendship means to them.
Using technology, students will respond to a multimedia presentation on school violence.
Materials: teacher's workstation connected to a projector or projection screen (workstation must have access to the Internet and have Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher pre-installed), student computers with Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher already installed, Internet access, network printer access, paper, pens or pencils, and health textbooks.
Procedure:
Personal responsibility focuses on one's physical health and how the decisions made today affect the future. Students will explore the affects of drugs on the body and the consequences of promiscuous sexual activity.
Students will take a virtual field trip on drug use and abuse.
Students will complete a scavenger hunt on STDs.
Healthy relationships are based on how you feel about yourself. Students will examine how their feelings affect their behaviors. They will explore the components of healthy relationships and learn how to avoid unhealthy relationships.
Students will create a photo essay about their feelings toward their families.
Friendship begins by understanding that each person is unique. When students learn to respect each other, they can make better choices about who are their friends. Students will explore what friendship means to them.
Using PowerPoint, students will create a scrapbook on friendship and friends.
Community involvement and civic duty help students feel that they belong to a larger group. When students feeling belonging, they are more responsible toward other people. Through exploring a variety of resources, students will identify their rights and responsibilities as citizens in the United States.
Students will complete a tour of the Virtual Museum: Schools at a Crossroads.
Assessment:
See assessment or rubric for each activity.
Note: This thematic unit was designed to be used with 9th through 12th grade students with disabilities in the Employment Diploma program. The standards for their program are correlated with the standards for fourth through sixth grades. This lesson could be used with students from grades five through 12.
