Two Skills Walk Into A Unit...And Chaos Ensues!

Want a simpler, stronger way to build real health literacy? In today's episode, I make the case for teaching one National Health Education Standard skill per unit, pairing it with relevant content and using the skill-development model to deliver focused practice and actionable feedback. The twist: while classrooms thrive on focus, life blends skills, so we can also map the natural connections students will encounter beyond school.

Episode Resources

• National Health Education Standards Skills Grid
• National Health Education Standards: Educator Kit

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AI Disclaimer: I outline or script my podcasts; all words are my own. Buzzsprout's "Cohost AI" created the title and chapter markings, put together a transcript, and wrote the description for this episode.

Transcript

Framing The One-Skill Question

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Welcome back or welcome to the Level Up Health Education Podcast. I am Jeff Bartlett and I'm here to help you level up your teaching. And in today's episode, I want to tackle the question of how many national health education standard skills to teach during one unit. When I was learning about skills-based health education in grad school, which I was doing part-time while I was teaching full-time, I started to shift our middle school curriculum to a skills-based approach. And during that time, I was taught that you teach one skill paired with a health content area at a time. So you pick a national health education standard skill from standards two through eight and align it with a content area. And then you use standard one to determine what objective or objectives from the performance indicators you'd like to use for the content that you select. This is still how I plan curriculum. And if you look at our scope and sequence for our middle school, there's still a focus on one skill per unit. I also advocate for this approach when I present about skills-based skills-based health ed or when I teach others about it as it is considered best practice. I find that focusing on one skill at a time allows for clearer, more specific learning objectives and opportunities to give targeted feedback to students. I also can't identify a problem that switching to teaching multiple skills at a time would solve. So I don't plan to change this approach anytime soon, but as time goes on, I'm choosing to focus more and more on the natural connections that exist between the health skills from our national health ed standards and highlighting those as opposed to directly teaching multiple skills at once. This is something that I've talked about before. And if you subscribe to my email newsletter, I sent one a year ago, a little over a year ago, in January 2025, sharing my initial ideas on how these skills are connected. And so I created a chart which I'll link in the show notes that shared these ideas. I did ask for audience feedback. Now that I think about it, I might have gotten one, maybe two responses, so I never updated it. Um, but we'll take a look at that Google Doc later. I like to think about skills together because in real life, outside of our classrooms, we are using these health skills simultaneously, not in isolation. For example, if I'm researching health information online, I'm using skills, yes, such as accessing resources, but also I might be analyzing influences, I might be collaborating with others through interpersonal communication. And with that being said, our classroom is not real life, right? And it is much easier for students to demonstrate demonstrate these skills when there are rubrics and checklists, and there's not a lot of peer pressure to influence thinking. And if anything, our classroom can be viewed as more of like a practice facility or a training ground. This makes me think of a well-known uh quote from a student in health teacher Andy Milne's class. Uh, and I'm paraphrasing here, but that the the real test for health class ultimately is life. And in life, we are typically using these skills at the same time. Now, just because in life we may be using multiple skills at once, that doesn't mean we have to teach multiple skills at once, especially if our goal is to improve student health literacy and to get them to demonstrate skills proficiently. Now, I do know plenty of teachers who use multiple skills within a singular unit, and this is often to make the most of limited curriculum time. And I do want to emphasize, I know sometimes that I've made planning decisions for time efficiency that sometimes backfire in the way that they turn out that they decrease learning efficiency, if that makes sense. It might look better on paper or in a plan book, but in practice it can definitely be a different story. Sometimes these good intentions can muddy things for our students and make things more confusing instead of more clarified. But teachers who use multiple skills in a unit might have students, for example, focus on decision making while they tie it into goal setting. Or they have a unit where students use the skill of accessing resources to research information and ideas that they'll share as part of an advocacy project. If you look at the skills and examine the rationales behind each, you'll see that these combinations can make sense. And yes, there is an argument that could be made that this approach could maybe improve health literacy because students are working with greater quote rigor by combining skills together. But to gently push back on this, think of a math class that decides to teach two concepts simultaneously. And I'll be honest, I'm about to ask the math teacher down the hallway for me on the way out on Friday to give me an example of this, and I really I forgot to, but I know that sometimes like learning one singular math skill or concept at a time is a lot. And so trying to add another one on top of that, it would just make things way more confusing, at least for me. So I tend to avoid this approach because I want to see how students improve on one individual skill at a time. I also acknowledge that I am coming from a place where I see students for a full semester every other day. That's approximately 45 classes. So I have some time that other people may not uh when they're teaching health education. But I really don't know how I would how I would see if students are improving on a one skill at a time if I'm blending skills together, at least in a time-efficient way and in a way that would make the most sense to students. And that's not to say it's wrong. So, as a reminder, though, a key difference between a skills-based health education curriculum and a curriculum that is based on skills is the use of the skill development model. And as a side note, I'm presenting at Shape in Kansas City in March about skill development, all about the skill development model. So I hope to see you there if you're going. But even when we're revisiting skills from a previous unit, it's important to reintroduce a skill, model how it's connected to the skill you're talking about, and have plenty of student practice time if you're trying to teach two skills at once. And if you're doing this, then you'll have to go through the skill development model twice. If you really want students to have an opportunity to learn the importance of the skill and practice the skill and get feedback and make mistakes and everything like that. And this can get pretty murky, not only from a planning perspective, but also from a student learning perspective. If you are adamant about this approach, or that's really the only option you have to dive into multiple skills, I do have some ideas later on that might be helpful for you. But if you're like me and you focus on one skill at a time, it can help to revisit a skill previously learned in a unit while discussing another skill. For example, when I am teaching decision making, it is natural to revisit the skill of analyzing influences since we use the decide model of decision making, and there is a step about identifying influences. And we'll explain more on that later. And yes, this could only be surface level for sure, but it is a start, and you can go a little bit more deeply there. Many connections that exist are obvious, but I'm not sure that students are aware of them, so they need to be made explicit. One way that we can make these connections explicit is to come back to the rationales behind each standard. And a great resource to figure out and read through those rationales is the Shape America National Health Education Standards Educator Kit. That's linked in the show notes. But if you look through the rationales for each statement, there are many connections to note. And so what I've started to do is I've started to actually put the rationales on my board when we introduce a unit. And I don't read them word for word most of the time because there's a lot there. And for middle schoolers, especially my sixth graders, they really don't care that much, but I can rephrase it in a way that works for them. For example, if you take a look at standard two, which is analyzing influences, I quote, this skill contributes to a better understanding of the connections between individual health, community health, and health equity, which can strengthen the use of other skills such as accessing information and advocacy. So, right there, I could present this to students and then have a quick turn and learn or think per share or other type of activity to get them to think about. Hey, like, how does this connect? How does this relate to what you've already learned, either in this grade level or previous grade levels? Another thing to think about though, because we don't teach in what I call the theoretical perfect teaching world vacuum, um, there is no guarantee that even if I taught, gave feedback on, and assessed a skill like two months earlier in the semester, that students will get that anyway, two months later. That's just the reality of things. Even if we're focusing on one skill at a time, we still don't want to deny these connections that exist between skills. And so making direct connections about how the skill fits into the entire curriculum and course a student is learning. Um this happens in other classes. So it should happen in our class too. For example, let's take a science class with a student labeling parts of a cell. Maybe they then connect those parts to what their function is and to how these different parts work together. And that's not really a perfect example, but I hope you know what I'm getting at. I want to direct you to the document that's linked in the show notes, and it's called the NHES skills grid. And these are ideas by skill of different connections between the skills, and I'll highlight a few right now that can be made explicit with ideas about what this could look like in your classroom. I want to note and emphasize that this doesn't require you to fully revisit each skill, but instead incorporate what students already know into the new skill that you're teaching. And again, check out that NHES educator kit from Shape America in the show notes. As one example, if we look at the skill of decision making, and if you look at analyzing influences in decision making, maybe students are understanding how influence affects their choices. If you tie in accessing resources and information, they may use data to inform decisions. We can tie in communication as far as how students are collaborating with others to make informed decisions or how they communicate to the decision, or potentially what they're doing as far as making the decision. For example, if they choose to model or sorry, to pick a refusal skill. And with goal setting, maybe they think about how decision making can guide goal planning. And when you look at advocacy and decision making, potentially they are trying to make decisions around the best way to advocate to their specific audience. So those are just some examples from the NHES grid to think about. So the big question, what can this look like in practice? Well, let's take a look at some examples. So if you are teaching or trying to teach two skills at once, my my first response is don't do it. If you are teaching two skills at once, though, for whatever reason, I would really be intentional about planning your lesson sequence and your assessment strategies. And there is more room for student error here, so it would be important to have a set path based on how students are or are not learning the skill that or skills you're teaching. I'd also be clear with how you scaffold learning activities and skill practices, and you need to develop rubrics and checklists that cover everything that you're looking for that also might end up overwhelming students or potentially you. So I would also go through these skill development skill development models sequentially for each skill, but not piecemeal, not bouncing back and forth. That's going to muddy a lot of the information and the skills that we're trying to get out to our students. So one skill at a time. Instead of doing this, though, what I would do is I would examine those rationale statements from Shape America behind each standard. I would look for connections that already exist that are mentioned in that document. I would then, or check out the NHES uh grid that I mentioned, I would then figure out how these can fit into your scope and sequence, and this is sequentially sequence-wise, right? Like the order that you're teaching each unit and go from there. It is possible to go through the skill development model in one class period. If your schedule is really tight and that's all you have, uh it is what it is, but that's a reality for a lot of people. If that is your situation, you could stack skills together if you are intentional and if you plan it out and you check all the boxes that you need to do from a planning perspective. But here's how it could work. Let's say you have a content unit on the area of vaping. You decide that you would like students to be able to access valid resources and then advocate. And your end goal, because you're planning backwards if we're in our theoretical perfect teaching world, right? You want students to create a series of social media posts for your school districts social media accounts to educate students and their families about the dangers of vaping. All right. You could begin that unit by going through the skill development model first for the skill of accessing valid resources. So you are you are explaining why this is an important skill. You are modeling it for students, they are practicing it. You're running through the whole skill development model just for the skill of accessing valid resources. They learn all what they need to do, and you assess them and you give them feedback. And then the end goal is for them to use that information that they find in their future advocacy projects. So when students are proficient in that skill and they know how to look at information and you've assessed them, you can then run through that skill development model for the skill of advocacy. And in this case, maybe you talk about how to write advocacy statements or something like that. And then when it's project time, after again, you've gone through the skill development model for advocacy and modeled it and you've explained the importance of it, you've modeled it, they practice it, they get feedback, you've assessed them, then the project combines those two. And you would then set up your rubric appropriately, right, with different performance indicators and things like that. And then students need to access valid and reliable sources to create their social media posts. I'm sure that other skills will work together like this in this example, but as a disclaimer, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. If we want students to improve health literacy, we can't water down our skill practice opportunities, we can't rush through feedback. And yeah, this is challenging given the realities of being a teacher in in 2026, but focusing on depth rather than breadth is something to keep in mind as well. But the example I gave can definitely work. Um, and it actually, if you are doing one skill at a time, has an impact on how you sequence your units, right? So, for example, you may decide when you're looking at your big scope and sequence to order things appropriately and go from there. So, some practical strategies for these connections. If you are interested in making connections between skills that your students already know, start with one skill. You can brainstorm how it's connected to another skill, or again, check out the National Health Ed Standards Educator kit in the show notes. You might decide that you need to reorder the units in your scope and sequence to really do this. For example, in our seventh grade curriculum, by the time we reach the skill of decision making, we've already covered analyzing influences and interpersonal communication. So when we teach the decide model, we have students use the refusal skill as one option when making a decision. And that identifying influences step includes a quick review of different types of influences that can impact health. So the order that you teach these skills can be important. Right now, my eighth graders are learning the skill of goal setting. And we use a SMART acronym, but our acronym is it is specific, measurable, adjustable, rigorous, and time bound. I know there are other versions of SMART out there that are slightly different, but this is the one that that works for us. And as of now, for the adjustable piece, we ask students to adjust either the frequency or the duration to make their goal harder or easier once they've begun working on it. And this step would be an opportunity for students to analyze influences by examining how external factors might affect their goal setting process. I could bring this up when I model the skill and explain the reasoning behind my goal setting process within the model. Maybe I ask students to dig more deeply into this through reflection questions. I could make it a part of their project, but I don't have to revisit that entire skill. Now, in eighth grade, our sequence goal setting is before analyzing influences, so it would be a review from seventh grade, which they don't always remember. So if you are brand new to skills-based self-ed or not quite skills-based, I would recommend first let's find a relevant skill that can support the content you're teaching, and then look for connections to other skills that you're tying into your curriculum. And if you are already skills-based, let's try maybe rewriting a unit to focus on these natural connections and not by teaching more than one skill at once, but more thinking about like how can I continue to bring these skills up so students see that we don't do things in isolation. And you can also think about the order of units as well. So, as always, I appreciate feedback and your perspective on what I'm sharing. Please send me an email. It's in the show notes, but Jeff at leveluphealtheducation.com with any feedback or dialogue and conversations around uh today's show. Just a quick disclaimer. Uh, I script my own podcast. These words are my own. I do use AI as an editor in particular. I use Grammarly. Occasionally I plug my script or my outline in the ChatGBT and ask it to critique it for me as well. Uh, but these words are my own. Thank you again for your support. I hope you took something away from this podcast. Again, please be in touch. Let me know how things are going in your classroom, and we'll see you soon.