Special Subjects (Grade 5)

Norfolk Public Schools: Physical Education and Health Curriculum Overview

The Norfolk Public Schools Physical Education/Health Program is designed to teach students fundamental concepts and skills that promote the development of healthy habits, relationships, and lifelong wellness.

Physical Education Program

The Physical Education program emphasizes active participation in a variety of physical fitness activities and experiences, focusing on the development of:

• Movement Skills: Teaching a variety of locomotor and non-locomotor movement skills.

• Fitness Principles: Exposing students to basic principles of conditioning and training.
• Health Behaviors: Promoting active lifestyles through setting individual fitness goals and making positive health decisions.

Commitment to Inclusion

To ensure all students can successfully participate, the program employs inclusive practice by offering differentiated instruction across activities. NPS promotes an environment where every student is challenged and can be successful by modifying tasks, equipment, and rules to meet the diverse needs, abilities, and experience levels of all learners.

Health Education Program

The Health Education program focuses on teaching students the importance of healthy habits on growth and development, with an emphasis on decision making and problem solving, self-management and goal setting, social awareness, relationships and communication skills, movement skills, self-awareness, information and resource seeking and self-advocacy and health promotion. Through interactive lessons, students explore important concepts across the following content areas:

• Nutrition and Balanced Eating
• Personal Safety
• Physical Activity and Fitness
• Physical Health and Hygiene
• Healthy Relationships*
• Mental and Emotional Health*
• Public, Community, and Environmental Health
• Substance Use and Misuse

*These health topics are taught through the district SEL curriculum.  There are no direct lessons taught in Physical Education classes.  However, learning standards in the Healthy Relationships and Mental and Emotional Health categories around anti-bulllying, teasing, good sportsmanship and persevering through difficulty are reinforced throughout all aspects of our physical education program.

Specialized Units

• Human Growth and Development (Grade 5): Fifth-grade students participate in a program providing an overview of the reproductive system's components, functions, and processes, including the physical changes that occur during puberty.

Note: Parents are notified prior to the beginning of this unit and provided with the opportunity to review instructional materials and may choose to opt out of participation.

D.A.R.E. (Grade 6) 

The health curriculum is supplemented by the D.A.R.E. program, which teaches students decision-making skills to support them in leading lives free from violence, substance abuse, and dangerous behaviors.  This curriculum is taught by our school resource officer, in partnership with our classroom teachers.

Instructional Schedule & Curriculum Design

Students attend Physical Education classes twice a week throughout the school year.

• At the younger grade levels (K-2), one class per month is dedicated to health education.
• At the upper elementary grade levels (3-6), one week a month is dedicated to health education classes between the months of November and May.
• Students at all grade levels participate in between 10-12 dedicated health education classes annually.
• The Physical Education/Health Curriculum is designed to build vertically so that students master core standards from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Frameworks by the time they complete sixth grade. The program actively seeks to build strong partnerships through Family and Community Engagement, ensuring that health learning is a shared responsibility between the school and the family.

Nutrition and Balanced Eating

• Discuss the benefits of balanced eating on physical health (e.g., supporting growth and development, ability to engage in physical activity), social health, and emotional and mental health (e.g., ability to manage stress, positive emotions) when making nutrition-related decisions.
• List options, predict potential outcomes of decision options, make a health-promoting choice, and analyze the outcome of decisions in common nutrition situations. 

Physical Activity and Fitness

• Apply basic offensive and defensive strategies and tactics in a variety of activities and small-sided games.
• Adjust performance of locomotor, manipulative, and stability skills based on environmental and task constraints and ensure safe physical activity participation of the individual and peers.
• Engage in independent and cooperative problem-solving activities while participating in physical activities.
• Compare benefits of various physical activities in order to support personal decision-making related to physical activity.

Physical Health and Hygiene

• Describe the physical, social, and emotional changes that occur during puberty and adolescence, how the timing of puberty and adolescent development varies considerably, and the role of puberty in overall development.

• Explain a variety of health-promoting practices to manage the social, physical, and emotional changes associated with puberty and into adolescence.
• Describe health-promoting behaviors during menstruation, including ways to maintain personal hygiene, cope with emotional changes, manage pain and identify when help or support is needed.
• Describe personal behaviors and strategies that promote health and/or avoid health risks (e.g., pedestrian safety, sun safety, protecting oneself from infectious diseases, adequate sleep, good nutrition, ergonomics, protective equipment, appropriate amounts of screen time, hearing protection, being physically active).
• Set a goal related to personal health (e.g., tooth brushing, sleep, hydration, ergonomics, sun safety, limiting screen time, hearing protection, physical activity, wearing protective equipment), identify resources to assist in achieving it, and track progress toward its achievement. 

Personal Safety 

• Demonstrate the use of assertive behavior, refusal skills, and actions intended for personal safety.

Physical Activity and Fitness 

• Demonstrate respect for self and responsible, safe interpersonal behavior (i.e., peer to peer, student to teacher) that contributes to positive social interaction in a variety of physical activity contexts
• Defines and provides examples of movement activities for developing the health-related fitness components and for developing skill-related fitness components.
• Describe health benefits of regularly participating in physical activity on multiple dimensions of wellness (e.g., cardiovascular health, fitness levels, muscle strengthening, stress management, supporting positive mental health)
• Recognizes and articulates how physical activity influences physiological changes in their body.
• Identify different physical activities, in physical education class and outside of school, for personal enjoyment and challenge, independently and with others.

Physical Activity and Fitness

• Recognizes the role of respectful interactions with others when participating in physical activity.
• Describes why following game rules are important in a physical activity setting.
• Accept, recognize, and actively involve others with both higher and lower skill abilities into physical activities, in and outside of physical education, and group projects.
• Demonstrate strategies for collaborating, working and playing safely and effectively with others, including perspective taking, in physical education and other physical activity settings. 

Physical Activity and Fitness

• Demonstrate developmentally-appropriate patterns of varied locomotor skills, jumping and landing, and step-like actions in a dynamic environment.
• Demonstrate ability to perform various locomotor skills combined with movement concepts (e.g., moving at different levels, pathways, directions) during dynamic small-sided games and other athletic and physical activities.
• Demonstrate developmentally-appropriate balancing on different body parts, rolling actions, and weight transfer actions in a dynamic environment.
• Demonstrate the ability to combine locomotor (including jumping and landing patterns) and manipulative skills (e.g., striking, dribbling) in a variety of small-sided practice tasks/games (e.g., for execution to a target, to demonstrate control).
• Demonstrate developmentally-appropriate manipulative skills with hands in a variety of situations and tasks (i.e., catching/fielding, sending and receiving an object, obtaining possession of game object, striking a ball with short- and long-handled implement, kicking, rolling a ball, volleying, and serving, dribbling, throwing and catching) in a variety of environments.

Competency in these report card standards are the end-of-year goals.

Performance Skills

• Demonstrates age appropriate movement/motor concepts and manipulative skills
• Demonstrates age appropriate understanding of physical fitness and health

Learner Qualities

• Demonstrates sportsmanship and participates fully and cooperatively
• Demonstrates self-control of body, voice, and personal space