Wellness
WELLNESS
The Canton Wellness Department will encourage, educate, and motivate our students to make positive daily decisions and develop healthy lifelong habits. The Wellness curriculum provides students with the opportunity to develop their physical, mental, and social well-being.
Health Education
Grade 6
The grade 6 curriculum is designed to assist and encourage students as they transition from childhood and enter into adolescence. Our social emotional curriculum works to build and develop communication, self-reflection, and conflict resolution skills while recognizing healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviors. We study the physical, mental, and social changes students experience during puberty and how to manage new responsibilities and changes that come with this transitional time. Our risk reduction curriculum addresses the substances of nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana and introduces students to refusal strategies. Our personal health curriculum examines the impact that everyday health practices have on our wellness and works to discover healthy habits through reflection, goal setting, and advocacy.
Grade 7
The grade 7 curriculum helps students begin to take an active role in determining the adult they hope to become. Our social emotional curriculum includes a comprehensive bullying prevention section that encourages students to appropriately recognize and respond to bullying, along with peer collaboration, managing conflicts successfully, and negotiating for positive outcomes. We work with this grade in identifying stressors, and coming up with personal strategies to manage stress before, during and after it occurs. We continue our risk reduction curriculum, examining addiction and effects while exploring the decision making process and examining influences. Grade 7 students will examine nutrition, focusing on understanding food labels, nutrients, and advertising, providing students with the knowledge to make informed choices. Students will learn about their reproductive health through studying the reproductive system and its functions.
Grade 8
The grade 8 program reinforces the social emotional curriculum from previous years by examining violence prevention strategies, developing advocacy skills, and exploring the impact decisions have on one’s self, family, and community. Students participate in “Break Free from Depression,” a program from Boston Children’s Hospital as part of our mental health curriculum. This curriculum and program helps students identify depression early in themself or a peer and encourages seeking support and treatment, practice coping skills and strategies, and access to resources. The 8th grade curriculum also includes a comprehensive, student centered drug and alcohol unit with a focus on personal and community impact, as well as a unit on human reproduction that teaches students about health enhancing behaviors and decision making skills.
Physical Education
Grade 6
Sixth grade Physical Education builds upon the movement skills mastered in the fifth grade. This is a skills based PE curriculum exposing students to various forms of catching, throwing, striking, and kicking. These skill sets will be used while students are put into movement situations working on different locomotor skills. Students will build on social interactions with peers through gameplay and collaborative opportunities.
Grade 7
Seventh grade Physical Education builds upon the wellness skills mastered in sixth grade. Students will be put into strategic decision making environments during gameplay that require transferable skill sets to be practiced such as decision making and problem solving, building resilience, team work and collaboration, and managing emotions during competitive situations. Locomotor skills patterns and skill sets will continue to progress and mature throughout these collaborative opportunities. Personal fitness will be emphasized through the use of PLT4M, and students will begin evaluating their own wellness plans.
Grade 8
Eighth grade Physical Education builds upon the wellness skills mastered in seventh grade. The major themes in the 8th grade Physical Education curriculum consist of learning skills through cooperation, team work, and strategies for success. The program emphasizes skill development through positive social interactions in all units of study. All activities will help to promote sportsmanship and responsible behavior. Fitness concepts are developed and emphasized through the use of cardiovascular, flexibility, agility, and strength exercises. Students will develop their own fitness plans and have a clear understanding of their own personal wellness.