All students will acquire the knowledge and skills of what is most essential to become individuals who possess health and physical literacy and pursue a life of wellness by developing the habits necessary to live healthy, productive lives that positively impact their families, schools and communities.
In September of 2022, school districts across New Jersey will be implementing the updated New Jersey Student Learning Standards across 7 disciplines, including Health and Physical Education. This page has been designed to help you explore the updated H/PE standards and some of the possible resources that teachers may access to support classroom lessons.
The release of the NJSLS 2020 in all 7 disciplines created a new consistency regarding the format of the learning standards. For each content area, the NJDOE developed:
A Mission Statement
Vision Statements
Practices (Skills and behaviors that impact ALL areas of the curriculum)
Disciplinary Concepts
Performance Expectations
The ten Comprehensive Health and Physical Education practices describe the ways in which individuals in these field engage in their careers as well as reflect the actions and behaviors of active, informed, responsible individuals and contributing community members. Curriculum writers and educators will want to consider how they can design learning experiences that will enable their students to develop these skills in conjunction with the content knowledge reflected in the core ideas and performance expectations.
Acting as a responsible and contributing member of society
Building and maintaining healthy relationships
Communicating clearly and effectively (verbal and nonverbal)
Resolving conflict
Attending to personal health, emotional, social, and physical well-being
Engaging in an active lifestyle
Making decisions
Managing - self
Setting goals
Using technology tools responsibly
The Standards
The standards are now divided into consistent "grade-bands". While districts must develop a curriculum that encompasses all of the performance expectations, they have the flexibility to select their own resources from which teachers will create their lesson plans.
District have the discretion to determine which grade level is best suited to cover each performance expectation (*Items in parentheses are only examples. We are obligated to the performance expectations, not the examples.)
MTSD has been preparing for this upcoming change since the summer of 2021. Our H/PE teachers have attended training to introduce the structure and content of the new standards, participated in professional learning with HiTops to help deepen our understandings around best practices to create affirming school environments for all students, and have been working collaboratively as teams to review and select appropriate resources to support the lesson planning process.
The updating of the H/PE standards will be completed by September 1, 2022. At that time, our community will be able to identify which topics are being taught in each grade level, as well as explore the specific resources that have been selected. At this time, New Jersey does contain a provision in educational code for parents to inform the school if they would like their student to be excused from any part of the health curriculum which is "is in conflict with his conscience, or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs"
