The Wellness Wheel

My Grade 6 Health class begins with a 'mini unit' called "Why Well-being Matters". 

It aims to introduce students to the holistic nature of health and well-being. When I first ask students what it means to be healthy or unhealthy, most of the examples they think of revolve around diet, exercise and maybe sleep. Students learn that this is only one part of their health and wellbeing, their physical health. We discuss how someone might look fit on the outside yet still not be very healthy on the inside. We also learn that our well-being is not static but changes throughout our lives and is something we can always be working on.

We use the Wellness Wheel to refer to six dimensions of health. Students learn about each dimension and then create their own Wellness Wheel, including health-enhancing behaviours they currently do to care for their well-being. If students feel stuck thinking of an example for a particular dimension, they can suggest something they would like to start doing. 

We refer to the Wellness Wheel constantly throughout the Health course and use it as a self-assessment at the beginning of our Goal-setting unit.  

Below you will find the following resources: student work samples and a template of the Wellness wheel to download.

Try it with your class and let me know how it goes!

The six dimensions of health were adapted from the 10 dimensions of health in Alperine & Benes' book "Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education". 

The Wellness Wheel activity is from the incredible Amy Lauren Smith.

Check out Andy Milne's popular "Healthy Student" game where the dimensions of Wellness are used to analyse the health of a fictitious student.