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This article talks about how universities should take the role in promoting health and wellness. They can do so by creating wellness clinics for current illnesses and to monitor high blood pressure and obesity.

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Health

Universities to take lead role in promoting health & wellness

April 29, 2019 4:14 pm

Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete while launching USP's 2019 Health Week in Suva [Source: Fijian Government]

Tertiary institutions around the country must take the lead in providing an environment that promotes the health and wellbeing of students.

Launching USP's 2019 Health Week in Suva today, Minister responsible Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete says students should be empowered to make informed choices regarding their health.

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"Existing Health Status report in the Pacific shows there are significant health problems in NCD, CD.STI, and HIV. Our data shows that we have about 900 in this nation with HIV. So 50% of the Pacific population are below the age of 25 and a significant part of USP population is within this cohort."
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Dr Waqainabete says nutrition and exercise remain a key challenge to addressing non-communicable diseases.

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"Create a wellness clinic for current illnesses and to also monitor obesity, high blood and the students who have been found to have this, the mechanisms in place through the USP wellness centre and the clinic and also through the ministry of health and medical services to support them."
USP's Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education, Professor Richard Coll says the one-week program aims to ensure students take responsibility for their own health.

The Ministry says the Pacific has a youthful population and Fiji needs to respond to the health challenges in a smart way.

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Universities to take lead role in promoting health & wellness

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Universities to take lead role in promoting health & wellness April 29, 2019 4:14 pm Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete while launching USP's 2019 Health Week in Suva [Source: Fijian Government] Tertiary institutions around the country must take the lead in providing an environment that promotes the health and wellbeing of students.

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Topic 5: Personal Health & Wellness

Is Measles Here To Stay?

In this article on NPR's website, the author discusses the recent measles outbreak that is plaguing many parts of the country. Since January 2019, over 700 measles cases have affected 22 U.S. states. They state that this year's outbreak is the largest since 1994. Measles is in danger of losing its elimination status. "Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, which means that you need more than 93% immunity to protect a population," says [a physician]. "One dose of the vaccine turned out to not be quite enough." Teachers may not have control over getting their students vaccinated, but they do have control over educating children about diseases and protecting themselves, and perhaps relaying that information to parents.

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In 2000, the Pan-American Health Organization announced a monumental public health achievement: Widespread vaccination efforts, overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had effectively eliminated measles from the United States.

The disease, which before the vaccination era affected 3 to 4 million people in the U.S. each year, was now isolated to small, contained outbreaks connected to international travel.

This year's record-setting outbreak threatens that achievement.

Since January, over 700 cases of measles have been reported in 22 states. Most of the affected have never been vaccinated. Sixty people have been hospitalized, and the case numbers continue to climb, although in some regions, like the Pacific Northwest, outbreaks have subsided.

Though the current numbers are dwarfed by the scale of cases in the first half of the 20th century, they're still meaningful, says René Najera, an epidemiologist and editor of the vaccine education website History of Vaccines.

"We are getting very close to a tipping point. If cases continue to escalate, the U.S. could lose its elimination status," says Najera.
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A disease is considered eliminated from a country when it can no longer be contracted within its borders, though cases tied to international travel - like those that have happened since 2000 - can still occur.

Losing elimination status would mark a failure of one of the biggest public health achievements in our history.

Before the 1960s, "measles was basically a universal experience of childhood," says James Colgrove, a public health historian at Columbia University.

Essentially everyone got it. Of the millions infected each year, 400 to 500 would die, tens of thousands would be hospitalized, and hundreds would face serious complications, like encephalitis, according to the CDC.

"People had experienced the harm measles could do, and so were receptive to the vaccine when it came out," says Najera.

The first steps towards a measles vaccine were taken in 1954, when John F. Enders and Dr. Thomas C. Pebbles collected throat swabs and blood samples from children at a Boston school that had just experienced an outbreak.

Enders and his lab managed to isolate and culture the measles virus, and eventually adapted it to chicken embryos, eventually resulting in the release of a vaccine in 1963. In 1968, a more effective vaccine was developed by Maurice Hilleman and colleagues, and is the same measles vaccine (combined with a mumps and rubella vaccine) used in the U.S. today.

"The measles vaccine was widely accepted and welcomed," says Najera. Between 1964 and 1974, the number of measles cases in the U.S. plummeted. During this time states began adopting laws requiring proof of immunization in order to enroll in public schools. "These kinds of laws helped drive the immunization effort," says Colgrove.
Don't see the graphic above? Click here.
By 1978, vaccination efforts had been going so well that the CDC set the goal of eliminating measles from the US by 1982. Amesh Adalja, a physician and an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, explains that achieving elimination requires "herd immunity," or a level of immunity among a population such that the chances of vulnerable people (like infants or the immunocompromised) contracting the virus are exceedingly small.

"Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, which means that you need more than 93 percent immunity to protect a population," says Adalja. "One dose of the vaccine turned out to not be quite enough."

In 1989 measles surged to 18,193 cases, around 40 percent of which occurred in vaccinated children. After that outbreak, public health officials began recommending two doses of the measles vaccine. That recommendation, in conjunction with redoubled efforts to vaccinate lower-income communities, worked. Measles rates continued to drop, allowing the Pan-American Health Organization to declare the disease eliminated from the U.S. in 2000.

"It was an enormous public health achievement, particularly because measles is so contagious," says Colgrove.

Of course, in the years since, measles outbreaks have occurred, but all stem from international travel. ln 2014, 383 cases were reported among Ohio's Amish community, which has low vaccination rates. Two Amish men returned from typhoon relief work in the Philippines, and unknowingly brought back the virus, fueling the outbreak. In 2015, an outbreak occurred in Disneyland, where 147 cases were suspected to have originated from a traveler from the Philippines.

Every outbreak since elimination was declared has eventually fizzled out, as the virus hit the wall of herd immunity, keeping elimination status of the U.S. intact.

But now, public health officials worry that elimination status could be cracking as measles mounts a comeback. "If things don't change, we could be back in a United States where measles is not eliminated," says Najera.

That would not mean that the U.S. would go back to having 3 to 4 million people affected each year; vaccination levels are high enough to prevent that. But outbreaks would become more common.

Unvaccinated young children have the highest risk of contracting measles and developing rare but serious complications from the disease.

"Statistically speaking, once we get above 1,000 cases of measles we're going to have a death," says Najera. "For an entirely preventable disease, that's unacceptable."

"We aren't there yet, but we are getting very close," says Najera. "If these numbers continue to climb, and new cases to pop up that aren't associated with foreign travel, we're there."

Most cases in the current outbreak are linked to travel but Adalja says the longer the outbreak goes on, the harder it is to trace back any given case back to a introduction by a traveler. As the outbreak simmers, the concern is that the domestic reservoir of measles is growing, making it more likely for vulnerable people to pick up an infection within our borders.

The U.S. could reach that point within several months, according to Adalja. "If these chain of outbreaks continue burning for a year, we'd be in a position to question the elimination status," he says. The cause? Vaccine refusals.

"We hadn't been threatened with losing our elimination status before vaccine refusal rates went up," says Adalja. "Because of the inaction of certain individuals, they've allowed measles to come back. These are completely preventable outbreaks."

State-by-state MMR vaccine coverage varies, ranging from 85 percent in Missouri to 98 percent in Massachusetts according to 2017 data from the CDC. And some local communities have even lower rates.

Najera says states and local governments should be taking action now. Many already have. On April 9, the New York City Health Commissioner ordered all unvaccinated individuals living or working in Brooklyn to get vaccinated or face a $1000 fine and on April 19 a judge upheld the order. The Washington state legislature is currently considering bills to remove personal exemptions for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

"If we do everything possible to get people vaccinated, we might contain this outbreak," says Najera. "But we're not there yet."

"The 200-year history of vaccines has shown that it's always a challenge to maintain high levels of immunity because any vaccination program will inevitably become a victim of its own success," says Colgrove. "The better vaccines work, the more people think they don't need them anymore."

Jonathan Lambert is a freelance science journalist based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on twitter @evolambert

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In 2000, the Pan-American Health Organization announced a monumental public health achievement: Widespread vaccination efforts, overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had effectively eliminated measles from the United States. The disease, which before the vaccination era affected 3 to 4 million people in the U.S.

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The Title-- Teach Mindfulness, Invite Happiness-- says it all. By teaching students how to be mindful, to live in the present moment "with kindness and curiosity," we can help them fight the anxiety and depression that is running more and more rampant among the youth of our society today. Author and teacher Erin Sharaf explains that she begins teaching mindfulness to her students by introducing the triangle of awareness-- which includes thoughts, emotions, and sensation-- then by moving into breathing exercises. This, she explains, strengthens the connection between mind and body-- a connection which many are lacking in today's day and age.

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Teaching students mindfulness can help them counteract the negative emotions and low self-esteem associated with a culture of standardized testing.

By objective measures, our young people are more anxious, more depressed, and have more psychopathology in general than students did a few decades ago. This has important implications for educators, school administrators, and society at large. What if our traditional school systems are unwittingly contributing to the problem -- and what if a relatively simple practice could help?

Sense of Failure

As we are all well aware, the current educational system is narrowing its definition of what defines student success. It's almost all cognitive knowing, as evidenced by standardized testing. The pros and cons of that system have been widely debated, so I won't rehash them here. However, a side effect of this system is decreased flexibility in how we define success, and we are leaving many students with internal beliefs that they are failures.

A young person could be a prodigy in one or more areas (kinesthetic, inter-personal, musical, ecological), yet still grow up thinking that he or she is a failure based on messaging given by the schools. As some students' light dims and self-doubt grows, there's a good chance that they won't grow into their full brilliance and power. This is a tragic outcome that's a loss for all of us -- yet it's also an avoidable outcome.

How Mindfulness Can Help

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to present-moment experience and doing so with kindness and curiosity. It is not cognitive but sensory, and so taps into and strengthens different but vitally important parts of the brain that have been neglected by traditional education. One crucial attribute of mindfulness is that it is practiced without judgment. Many of our students are so hard on themselves and their internal critic is so loud that just a few moments of being given permission to not judge can bring huge relief to body and mind. I have seen it bring students to tears.

Just a few weeks ago, I was introducing the practice to some graduate students in a highly competitive health sciences program. Presumably they were all successes in the conventional system. I started by explaining the triangle of awareness to them -- how thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations all affect each other. I then led them through a guided contemplation to illustrate the point. They were invited to imagine a stressful situation and notice how they were feeling in their body, what emotions they were experiencing, and what thoughts they were having. By noticing the thoughts as the final step in the process, students can identify them as just thoughts they're having and not truths that must be believed, especially if these thoughts are causing unpleasant physical sensations and negative emotions.

We then did a five-minute mindful breathing exercise. The students closed their eyes and were invited to let the sensation of breathing command their full attention. When they noticed their attention wandering, they were allowed to notice where it went, but were encouraged to gently and kindly escort their awareness back to the breath.

During the discussion after the practice, one young woman was in tears. She had noticed her thoughts telling her that she was probably breathing wrong and wasn't good at it. This led to tightness in her chest, her heart racing, and a feeling of anxiety. In those few minutes, she recognized how her thoughts have been contributing to her anxiety all these years and also causing discomfort in her body. The ridiculousness of not being good at breathing revealed to her in stark clarity how insidious and unfair her inner critic was. She was excited to have made this connection and to have new tools for working with it.

Honoring True Genius

I think this anecdote illustrates what is going on for many of our students. Sadly, many of them never make the connection between mind and body, and just keep sinking into those self-defeating thoughts as they worry about how they will measure up on the next standardized test. These thoughts are contributing to the rise in mental illness and inhibiting students from reaching their full human potential.

There is now ample evidence that mindfulness practice enhances positive emotions (PDF). Imagine the possibilities if we offered this to young people with developing brains! What if we helped all students make this simple connection and gave them the tools to strengthen their own inner knowing? What if we gave them permission to honor their true genius, even if we can't measure it on a standardized test? What if we practiced full disclosure and acknowledged that there are many different kinds of intelligence, and that some cannot be measured by conventional means? What if schools gave equal time and emphasis to cultivating things like kindness and compassion?

It might just change everything.

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Teaching students mindfulness can help them counteract the negative emotions and low self-esteem associated with a culture of standardized testing. By objective measures, our young people are more anxious, more depressed, and have more psychopathology in general than students did a few decades ago. This has important implications for educators, school administrators, and society at large.

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For the health topic Promoting Personal Health and Wellness, I found an article written by PHEAmerica that talks about the importance of teaching health and wellness and how to do so. The article goes on to explain that because of the increase in the number of students who go through very serious conditions that impact their life negatively, teaching Personal Health and Wellness has become more vital. The article explains that it is important that the whole school and community works together to teach the students about this topic. The goal is to "engage students with the issues and decisions that they presently might face, but also to support them in ensuring that they can maintain and improve their health and wellness throughout their lives." The article list some important ways teachers can support their student's personal health and wellness by role modeling a healthy lifestyle,  use methods to help reach learning goals,  and understanding and appreciating the importance of personal health and wellness. The more that teachers, schools, and communities work together to help teach health and wellness the more students will benefit. Some important aspects of the articles teachers can take away is to make sure your lessons are developmentally appropriate. Teachers should also note that it is important to incorporate health and wellness when able to not just when teaching the students about the specific topic.

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Health and wellness teaching is rapidly becoming a vital part of the school day. More and more children and youth are coming to school with conditions that are negatively impacting their lives. No longer can health and wellness be considered an "if we have time we'll get to it" part of a school day. As evidenced by the data, children and youth are increasingly entering our classrooms anxious, lacking self-confidence, and suffering from a litany of social, emotional and physical health concerns. Therefore, it's more important than ever for schools to continue to find ways to effectively provide students with opportunities to develop essential health and wellness skills.
One Way...Sharing the Responsibility
One of the most effective ways to impact health and wellness behaviors in students is through comprehensive programming (Joint Consortium for School Health, 2010). For example, Canadian authorities have attempted to approach this challenge through Comprehensive School Health (CSH) programming. It is widely accepted that CSH supports student learning, while simultaneously addressing school health and wellness in a planned, integrated and holistic manner (Berg et al., 2017).

In many ways, education and health are interdependent. Students are better learners when they are healthy and well, and better educated people tend to be healthy (Joint Consortium for School Health, 2010). As student health and wellness extends beyond the classroom, a comprehensive framework that shares and integrates responsibility is a practical answer that creates a joint ownership of responsibility (Joint Consortium for School Health, 2010).

A comprehensive approach to health and wellness looks beyond what is happening in an individual classroom, and encourages the support of the whole school and extended community. It can involve multiple personnel, agencies, and programs both in and out of the school environment to assist in meeting student health and wellness needs, and assist in developing health and wellness literacy. Such a framework is designed to not only engage students with the issues and decisions that they presently might face, but also to support them in ensuring that they can maintain and improve their health and wellness throughout their lives. It assists students in developing and demonstrating increasingly sophisticated health and wellness related knowledge, skills and attitudes.
Benefits of a Comprehensive Approach to Health and Wellness
When it comes to student health and wellness, developing a comprehensive approach has several benefits, including:

Encouraging and promoting health and wellness lifestyle choices

Incorporating health and wellness into every aspect of school

Identifying links between health and education issues and systems

Supporting families and the community

A comprehensive approach to health and wellness is an effective way to improve both health and education outcomes. However, it has to be recognized that the teacher alone cannot be responsible for the entire development of student health and wellness. A truly comprehensive approach must include the teacher, school and community.
Role of the Teacher
Although Heath Education teachers hold a key leadership role in the delivery of health curriculum programming, all teachers share the responsibility for health and wellness education regardless of the curriculum area being taught or the teacher's curriculum specialization. All teachers need to ensure that students acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will lead to positive health and wellness lifestyles. Also, all teachers are constantly on display in front of their students and have a unique opportunity to role model positive health and wellness behaviors. As 'observational' learning is a powerful and influential form of learning, all teachers share professional responsibility for portraying personal behaviors that mirror and reinforce positive health and wellness behaviors for students.

Teachers can support a comprehensive approach to health and wellness by:

Understanding and appreciating the importance of health and wellness in their school

Supporting the development of a comprehensive approach to school health and wellness

Utilizing where appropriate, methods to meet learning outcomes across all subject areas

Delivering developmentally appropriate lessons

Employing materials, resources, and personnel from the school, home and community

Role modeling an active, healthy lifestyle

Role of the School
Coordination is a key ingredient to successfully promoting a comprehensive approach to health and wellness in schools. A coordinated program is more than a collection of ideas, thoughts, and individual lessons, with each teacher conducting their own lessons and program (Berg et al., 2017). School personnel need to foster partnerships to ensure that activities, lessons and initiatives are coordinated to maximize the success of a school-wide health and wellness program. The goal of such a program is to develop and deliver an organized, sequential plan for teaching all students the necessary life skills that promote health and wellness.

Active partnerships between students, teachers, parents, health professionals and the community need to be emphasized to maximize optimum student health and wellness. Schools should foster and support a wide range of health and wellness promoting activities and services that occur in both the school and the community. Considerations include: physical condition of the buildings; playgrounds; management of noise; lighting; and air and water quality (Berg et al., 2017).

Through the consistent implementation of health and wellness promoting policies, the quality of a school's overall environment can be maintained. Health and wellness education must be both accessible and meaningful to students regardless of age, gender, race, ability, socioeconomic status and/or religion. For this to happen, it's imperative that students are provided with supportive and engaging school environments where they feel accepted and valued.
Role of the Community
Schools must be perceived as agencies of the community. Families, friends, local organizations and students themselves must play a critical role in health and wellness education (Anspaugh & Ezell, 2010). A wide-ranging set of complex and interacting variables that exist in communities influence health and wellness issues. As students are influenced by actions and behaviors in their homes, neighborhoods, local malls, recreation centers, etc., schools cannot take sole responsibility when a community experiences students who have developed problem behaviors in high 'risk' activities such as substance abuse and violence. Hence, for any prevention and intervention programming to be effective, programs must be based on a collaborative approach involving the whole community. Hence, the importance for a 'comprehensive' approach to the teaching of student health and wellness.
Concluding Thoughts
Teaching for health and wellness is a critical part of student learning. As children and youth continue to enter our classrooms with debilitating social, emotional and physical conditions, it's vital for schools to commit to effectively teaching health and wellness. However, health education and physical education teachers cannot be expected to fulfill this mission alone. A comprehensive approach that involves the teacher, school and community is essential. Student benefits will be maximized when teachers, schools and communities work closely together to plan for and deliver quality health and wellness learning opportunities for their students.
References
Anspaugh, D.J., & Ezell, G. (2010). Teaching today's health. (9th ed.). Pearson: San Francisco, CA.

Berg, S., Hickson, C., Bradford, B., & Fishburne, G. (2017). Teaching for health & wellness in children and youth. Ripon Publishing: Victoria, BC.

Joint Consortium for School Health. (2010). What is comprehensive school health? Retrieved from www.jcsh-cces.ca

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Developing Student Health and Wellness: A Comprehensive Approach

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Health and wellness teaching is rapidly becoming a vital part of the school day. More and more children and youth are coming to school with conditions that are negatively impacting their lives. No longer can health and wellness be considered an "if we have time we'll get to it" part of a school day.

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Tips for Maintaining Your Personal Health and Wellness. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.universalclass.com/articles/health/personal-health-basics.htm

This site has a very extensive overview on tips for maintaining personal health. It is split up into sections, each including introductory information as well as questions for a self check in, for each domain of personal health. Following each section are statistics and suggestions for practical ways to implement health practices into a routine.

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This article by Kids Health discusses how classroom exercise breaks for elementary students are good for their personal health and wellness. It indicates that exercising throughout the day or doing light stretching in the classroom will increase behavior and in turn benefit test scores. The article also provides detailed examples of different activities, stretches, and exercises that can easily be done in the classroom setting. This is important to incorporate in your classroom so the students are able to move around, increase their ability to focus and help them in the classroom environment.

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Boost Grades, Improve Behavior

Teachers can help improve test scores and student behavior by incorporating physical activity breaks into their daily classroom routines.

Research has shown that students who do brief bursts of exercise before taking tests score higher. In addition, regular activity breaks during the school day can help sharpen students' abilities to focus and stay on task.

Before trying these exercises in your classroom, make sure none of your students have health conditions that require restrictions on physical activity. Make sure each student has plenty of space, and won't bump into classmates or anything else in your room.

Also check to see if all your students are wearing appropriate shoes, such as sneakers. If students touch the floor during any exercises, make sure they wash their hands with soap and water or hand sanitizer when they're done their exercise break.

When taking a break, encourage activities that get the body moving and the heart pumping, such as dancing, jumping, and running in place. You also can try some of these easy-to-do exercises that work on flexibility, strength, and cardio. Each of these fun exercises for K-5 students takes 2-3 minutes, and kids can do them right at their desks. No equipment is needed.

Start with a brief warm-up (like jumping jacks or jogging in place) before performing these exercises.

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Light Exercises

Kids doing light physical exercises breathe normally as they do basic gross motor activities at a controlled pace.

Sky reaches

Do this three times:

1. Stand up.

2. Swing arms up to the sky.

3. Rise up on your tippy toes.

4. Reach for the sky while keeping your body tight.

5. Hold for 15 seconds.

6. Lower your heels and arms.

Shoulder blasts

Do this 10 times:

1. Hold your arms straight out to the sides.

2. Make arm circles forward (start with small circles, then gradually larger circles).

3. Reverse direction and make arm circles backward (large circles, then gradually smaller circles).

4. Raise your arms in front of your body and move your arms up and down.

5. Raise your arm above your head and wave them side to side, like a windshield wiper.

6. Pump your arms above head to "raise the roof."

Squats

Do this 10 times slowly:

1. Stand with your legs a little wider than shoulder-width apart.

2. Hold your arms out in front of your body.

3. Slowly bend your knees and squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor.

4. Rise up slowly.

Hand walks

Do this five times:

1. Bend forward at your waist.

2. Reach down and touch hands to floor.

3. Walk your hands out for a count of 8.

4. Walk your hands to left for a count of 4.

5. Walk your hands back to the center for a count of 4.

6. Walk your hands right for a count of 4.

7. Walk your hands back to the center for a count of 4.

8. Walk your hands back for a count of 8.

Star jumps

Do this 10 times:

1. Squat until your thighs are parallel to the floor (see squats).

2. From this position, jump up reaching your hands and feet out like a star.

3. Land softly on your feet, dropping back to the squat position.

Mountain climbers

Do 20 foot switches:

1. On the floor, go to a plank position by putting your:

Hands flat on the floor

Hands shoulder-width apart

Arms straight

Back flat

2. Mimic a running motion by switching one foot at a time.

Students can add intensity by adding speed.

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Moderate Exercises

Kids doing moderate physical exercises breathe harder than normal, move fairly quickly, and find it a little difficult to talk during the activities.

Sun salutation

Do this dynamic yoga stretch five times:

1. Start with your feet together, hands at your side, and your head in a neutral position.

2. Raise your arms out to the side and overhead.

3. Bend forward at your waist and put your hands on the floor.

4. Step or jump your feet back to the plank position (see mountain climbers).

5. Do half of a push-up (can drop to the knees).

6. Drop your hips toward the floor, lift head and chest into an "up-dog," and hold for 5 seconds.

7. Lift your hips and drop your head and shoulders to a "down-dog," and hold for 5 seconds.

8. Step or jump your feet back toward your hands in a forward bend.

9. Rise slowly to a standing position.

Moving through positions more quickly will increase the cardio workout.

To enhance stretching and strength, kids can hold forward bends and the up- and down-dogs for longer than 5 seconds.

Robots

Do this fast exercise 20 times:

1. Stand up tall.

2. Hop forward, then immediately backward.

3. At the same time, raise one arm up and one arm down.

4. Keep hopping your feet front and back while alternating arms up and down simultaneously.

Hand pushes

Do this isometric exercise, five times, with a 20-second break between each:

1. Put your hands in front of your face, with your palms touching.

2. Push your palms and fingers against themselves.

3. Keep pushing your hands together for 10-15 seconds.

Students can push their hands together as hard as they are comfortable as long as it doesn't hurt. Make sure students breathe during this exercise, because many kids tend to hold their breath while pushing. Challenge students to stand on one leg while pushing, then repeat standing on other leg.

Frog jumps

Do this dynamic exercise 12 times:

1. Start in the squat position (see squats), feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart.

2. Put your hands between your legs, like a frog.

3. Jump upward, and softly land back to the frog position.

Students may want to try this variation: While jumping up, click your heels together.

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Vigorous Exercises

Kids doing vigorous physical exercises breathe much harder than normal, move quite fast, and find talking to be difficult and labored during the activities.

Jump lunges

Do this 12 times slowly, making sure to stay balanced:

1. Stand tall with your feet together.

2. Place your hands on your hips or hold your arms out straight for balance.

3. Move into a lunge position by stepping one foot forward and bending your knee (don't extend your knee past your toes).

4. Hop and switch your feet so that your back foot comes forward to a bent-knee position, while the other foot goes back.

With this exercise, form is more important than speed.

Desk push-ups

Do this 12 times:

1. Put your hands firmly on the edge of your desk.

2. Step your feet back so you're leaning into your desk.

3. Bend your elbows and slowly lower your body toward your desk, keeping your back straight.

4. Push yourself away from your desk.

Make sure desks are stable and feet don't slip on floor. To increase difficulty, students can move their feet back farther from their desks or move their hands closer together on their desks.

T push-ups

Do this 10 times slowly:

1. On the floor, start in the plank position (see mountain climbers).

2. Lift one arm up and turn your body sideways so that your body looks like the letter T.

3. Hold the T for 5 seconds.

4. Return to the plank position, then repeat with your other side.

Burpees

Do this 10 times:

1. Stand tall with your hands at your side.

2. Squat down to the floor (see squats).

3. Put your hands on the floor.

4. Jump to the plank position (see mountain climbers).

5. Jump your feet back to the squat position.

6. Star jump back up (see star jumps).

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Classroom Exercise Breaks for Elementary Students

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Elementary school teachers can incorporate physical activity breaks into daily classroom routines to help improve test scores and student behavior. This article is for educators.

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Schools need role models that students can idolize in order to see how to be a strong and healthy person.  Students and young children enjoy copying what they see someone else doing, which is why it is so important to have positive role models within the school community in order to give the students an appropriate authority to look up to.  Making a positive impact on health and student wellness can be implemented by teacher and staff actions.  Teachers and staff can model eating healthy, drinking water instead of juice or soda, promoting daily exercise, and the concept of setting and reaching goals.  Engaging volunteers can widely effects the benefits and contributions by the students.  Providing and valuable lesson and extra helping hand in the school community will help students live a strong and healthy lifestyle.

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Schools need role models that students can idolize in order to see how to be a strong and healthy person.  Students and young children enjoy copying what they see someone else doing, which is why it is so important to have positive role models within the school community in order to give the students an appropriate authority to look up to.  Making a positive impact on health and student wellness can be implemented by teacher and staff actions.  Teachers and staff can model eating healthy, drinking water instead of juice or soda, promoting daily exercise, and the concept of setting and reaching goals.  Engaging volunteers can widely effects the benefits and contributions by the students.  Providing and valuable lesson and extra helping hand in the school community will help students live a strong and healthy lifestyle.

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action for healthy kids® fights childhood obesity

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undernourishment and physical inactivity by helping schools become healthier places so kids can live healthier lives.

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Staff as Healthy Role Models - Action for Healthy Kids

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Action for Healthy Kids, childhood obesity, nutrition, healthy schools, healthy children, every kid healthy

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Horton, A., Paluch, G., Sun, L. (2019, April 09). New York City Orders Mandatory Shots in Toughest U.S. Action to Date Against Measles. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/04/09/new-york-orders-measles-vaccinations-brooklyn-amid-outbreak-mayor-says/?utm_term=.851e54573443

In the article on personal health and wellness from The Washington Post the lack of immunizations causing a measles outbreak in New York is discussed. Officials in New York have declared a public health emergency because of the amount of people diagnosed with measles in the state. There are now mandatory vaccinations in areas of Brooklyn to try to stop the spread of the disease. Many Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn do not believe in vaccinating their children, as a result, it has become easy for measles to spread amongst the community. Officials are unsure of how far the disease has actually spread, because of this they are unsure if mandatory vaccinations will be able to stop the spread of disease. Some schools are trying to make it mandatory for their students to be vaccinated, but it has had little success so far. At least 19 states have had at least one reported case of measles, but the number is spreading. This article reminds teachers to teach their students handwashing and about not sharing food and drinks with each other. Basic self-care can stop the spread of illnesses from student to student to an extent.

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Online article
Tips for Maintaining Your Personal Health and Wellness. (1999). Retrieved from https://www.universalclass.com/articles/health/personal-health-basics.htm

This article is an online article and provides tips for maintaining your personal health and wellness. The article goes over the basics such as, diet and adequate sleep, as well as the importance of physical activity. There is a huge obesity epidemic that effects teens today, from poor diet and lack of exercise can lead to chronic illnesses. Food is fuel and eating a balance diet improves your health significantly. Sleep is also a very important aspect of your health it helps your body grow and develop properly. Exercise is also very important to your health without it you can go through a lot of problems with your body/health. This article is an excellent article to discuss in the classroom because your personal health and wellness is always important especially at a young age. Unfortunately, many children may not have a model of good health in the home and can use information they learn at school to help them maintain good health.

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Why Sleep Should Be Every Student's Priority

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Why Sleep Should Be Every Student's Priority

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In the following article on student sleep deprivation from BBC News, researchers explain why sleep is essential for acquiring and preserving knowledge in the brain, particularly among young learners. The article states that slow-wave sleep, which is non-REM sleep, is responsible and important for forming and maintaining new memories. Information that passes from the hippocampus to the neocortex during slow-wave sleep actually creates more sleep spindles in the brain, which are associated with generating new information and concretizing the bond between this information and old information previously stored. Coupled with REM sleep, which controls logic and emotion, sufficient slow-wave sleep in children allows them to consolidate memory faster. However, due to the circadian rhythms of children differing vastly from those of teenagers, adults, and the elderly, children need more slow-wave sleep during the day in order to remember, retrieve, and successfully use everything they learn. Given this information, teachers should be mindful of students who seem to require more sleep during the day and check in with their parents to see how much/little they are sleeping at home. They can work with parents to put steps in place to alleviate sleep blockers, such as screen or phone time, or unfavorable conditions in a room, such as too much light or heat. Teachers can also send a student to the nurse if absolutely necessary so that the student can catch up during a free period.

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Jakke Tamminen has plenty of students who do that very studenty thing of staying up all night right before an exam, in the hope of stuffing in as much knowledge as they can. But "that's the worst thing you can do", the psychology lecturer at the UK's Royal Holloway University warns them.

He should know. Tamminen is an expert on how sleep affects memory, specifically the recall needed for language. Sleep learning - another idea beloved of students, in the hope that, say, playing a language-learning recording during sleep would imprint itself into the brain subliminally and they'd wake up speaking Latin - is a myth.

But sleep itself is essential for embedding knowledge in the brain, and the research of Tamminen and others shows us why that is.

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In Tamminen's ongoing research project, participants learn new vocabulary, then stay awake all night. Tamminen compares their memory of those words after a few nights, and then after a week.

Even after several nights of recovery sleep, there is a substantial difference in how quickly they recall those words compared to the control group of participants who didn't face sleep deprivation.

"Sleep is really a central part of learning," he says. "Even though you're not studying when you sleep, your brain is still studying. It's almost like it's working on your behalf. You can't really get the full impact of the time you put into your studies unless you sleep."
Inside the sleeper's brain
We're standing in Lab Room 1 of Tamminen's sleep lab, a sparsely decorated room with a bed, a colourful rug, and framed paper butterflies. Above the bed is a small electroencephalography (EEG) machine and monitor to detect activity in each research participant's brain, via electrodes placed on the head. These measure not only activity in different regions of the brain (frontal, temporal, and parietal), depending on their placement on the head, but also muscle tone (through an electrode on the chin) and eye movement (through an electrode next to each eye).

Down the hallway is the control room, where researchers can see in real time which parts of each volunteer's brain are being activated, for how long, and to what extent. It's easy to tell when a volunteer is in the rapid eye movement (REM) phase, based on the activity in the E1 and E2 (eye 1 and eye 2) graphs.

But more critical to Tamminen's current research - and to sleep's role in language development more generally - is a non-REM phase of deep sleep known as slow-wave sleep (SWS). SWS is important for forming and retaining memories, whether of vocabulary, grammar, or other knowledge. The interaction of different parts of the brain is key here. During SWS, the hippocampus, which is good at quick learning, is in constant communication with the neocortex, to consolidate it for long term recall. So the hippocampus might initially encode a new word learned earlier that day, but to truly consolidate that knowledge - spotting patterns and finding connections with other ideas that allow for creative problem-solving - the neocortical system needs to get involved.

Dreams, after all, are more than simply a replay of what happens during the day. Research has suggested that the regions of the brain that manage logic (the frontal lobe) and emotion (the amygdala) interact differently during dreams, allowing for these imaginative new connections in the language learner. And students intensively studying the second language had more REM sleep. This gave them more time to integrate what they were learning while they slept - and better results during the day.
Nightly rhythms
There's a genetic component to how many sleep spindles we have. There's also a genetic basis to our internal clocks, which tell us when it's time to go to sleep and wake up. And adhering to these hard-wired cycles is necessary to reaching our peak cognitive performance. (Read more about why night owls shouldn't try to be morning people - and vice versa).

Few people know more about this subject than Michael W Young, who in 2017 was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for his work on clock genes with two co-researchers. Young explains that for optimal functioning - whether at school, work, or other areas of life - "what you want to do is to try to recreate a rhythmic environment".

For a person whose lifestyle, environment, or inherited sleep disorder leads to distorted sleep patterns, "a cheap first-line response" could be using blackout curtains at night or bright lights during the day to mimic natural light/dark cycles as much as possible.

Power naps
The circadian rhythm's role in adult learning is unquestionable, but its importance may be particularly pronounced in childhood.

Children have more slow-wave sleep than adults - which may be one factor explaining how quickly kids learn, in both language and other areas. The child sleep lab at Germany's University of Tuebingen investigates the role of sleep in consolidating children's memory. Monitoring what happens in children's brains during sleep, and how much information they retain before and after sleep, shows that sleep helps with accessing implicit knowledge (procedural memory) and making it explicit (declarative memory).

Adults can also call upon this kind of information learned during the day. But as researcher Katharina Zinke explains, "sleep is doing that in a more efficient way in children".

"The effects are stronger in early childhood because the brain is developing," says Dominique Petit, the coordinator of the Canadian Sleep and Circadian Network, who has also explored the circadian rhythm in children. In practical terms, this means that "children need to sleep during the day to remember everything that they have to learn".

"Daytime naps in young children have been shown to be really important for vocabulary growth, generalisation of the meaning of words and abstraction in language learning," she says. "Sleep continues to be important for memory and learning throughout the lifetime, though."

Not only does sleep help with accessing this information, it also changes the way this information is accessed. This makes brains more flexible at retrieving information (or able to access it in more ways). But it also makes them better at extracting the most significant parts of it.

"It's actually an active process of strengthening and changing the memory trace," Zinke says. "Memory gets transferred in a way that the most important information (the gist) is remembered."

Clearly, for children as well as adults, prolonged sleep isn't a sign of laziness in a language learner. It's critical for our brains' connections and our bodies' rhythms.

So, following your next intense Duolingo session, it's a good idea to sleep on it. You may be surprised the next morning by how much you've absorbed.

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Why sleep should be every student's priority

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Jakke Tamminen has plenty of students who do that very studenty thing of staying up all night right before an exam, in the hope of stuffing in as much knowledge as they can. But "that's the worst thing you can do", the psychology lecturer at the UK's Royal Holloway University warns them.

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https://www.edc.org/5-tips-promote-kids-mental-health-and-wellness

This article from EDC shares information about ensuring people are treating and acting positive around children so they mock that same behavior. The article mentions how parents should hug their children often, take them to their health care providers, be a positive role model, and recognize effort. Taking children to their health care providers ensures that they are healthy. Positive attitudes and good behavior is a great way for someone to be a role model to a child. If a child sees constant yelling, then they will mock that behavior and may have violent tendency. This article could help teachers and parents express the concerns for good mental health and wellness.

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Horton, A., Paluch, G., Sun, L. (2019, April 09). New York City Orders Mandatory Shots in Toughest U.S. Action to Date Against Measles. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/04/09/new-york-orders-measles-vaccinations-brooklyn-amid-outbreak-mayor-says/?utm_term=.851e54573443In the article on personal health and wellness from The Washington Post the lack of immunizations causing a measles outbreak in New York is discussed. Officials in New York have declared a public health emergency because of the amount of people diagnosed with measles in the state. There are now mandatory vaccinations in areas of Brooklyn to try to stop the spread of the disease. Many Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn do not believe in vaccinating their children, as a result, it has become easy for measles to spread amongst the community. Officials are unsure of how far the disease has actually spread, because of this they are unsure if mandatory vaccinations will be able to stop the spread of disease. Some schools are trying to make it mandatory for their students to be vaccinated, but it has had little success so far. At least 19 states have had at least one reported case of measles, but the number is spreading. This article reminds teachers to teach their students handwashing and about not sharing food and drinks with each other. Basic self-care can stop the spread of illnesses from student to student to an extent. 

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Horton, A., Paluch, G., Sun, L. (2019, April 09). New York City Orders Mandatory Shots in Toughest U.S. Action to Date Against Measles. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/04/09/new-york-orders-measles-vaccinations-brooklyn-amid-outbreak-mayor-says/?utm_term=.851e54573443In the article on personal health and wellness from The Washington Post the lack of immunizations causing a measles outbreak in New York is discussed. Officials in New York have declared a public health emergency because of the amount of people diagnosed with measles in the state. There are now mandatory vaccinations in areas of Brooklyn to try to stop the spread of the disease. Many Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn do not believe in vaccinating their children, as a result, it has become easy for measles to spread amongst the community. Officials are unsure of how far the disease has actually spread, because of this they are unsure if mandatory vaccinations will be able to stop the spread of disease. Some schools are trying to make it mandatory for their students to be vaccinated, but it has had little success so far. At least 19 states have had at least one reported case of measles, but the number is spreading. This article reminds teachers to teach their students handwashing and about not sharing food and drinks with each other. Basic self-care can stop the spread of illnesses from student to student to an extent. 

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Setting a good example for children on how to lead a healthy lifestyle is important for their wellbeing. As adults, our actions influence children, so we should promote cleanliness and the importance of health.

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It's flu season, which means that classrooms around the country are stocked full of tissues and hand sanitizer. Teachers are on the lookout for any cough or sneeze - the first sign of the flu.

As a teacher, you're (hopefully) diligent in helping your students stay healthy during this beast of a flu season. But promoting good health extends further than just preventing sickness. Students' overall health and wellness affect everything from their academic performance to success later in life. Even if you're not your school's physical education teacher, there is still a lot you can do to make sure your students live healthy lives.

In this article, we'll review some best practices that you can use to promote physical health and wellness before diving into some ways that you can help your students stay healthy before, during, and after flu season.
Set a Good Example

Encourage hand washing.

Encourage students to cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze (and make sure you lead by example)

Have plenty of tissues and hand sanitizer.

Recognize the first signs of sickness so that you can send home affected students.

So beyond the no-nonsense tidbits on setting a good example, how can you encourage your students to adopt healthy habits? Tissues, hand washing, and sanitizer are only half the battle. You students' overall health determines how often and how severe they will experience colds and the flu. Also, students who lack access to healthcare professionals are at a greater risk this time of year. In the following sections, review expert advice on how to promote health and wellness throughout the school year.
The CDC
The Centers for Disease Control has plenty of advice on how to promote student health. Here are some highlights:

Don't reward students with junk food.

Let student have water bottles. Hydration is key to staying well. (And encourage students to use reusable bottles to cut down on waste .)

Use movement as a learning tool. Exercise and fun are both great for immune system function. And after all, some of your students are kinesthetic learners --it may be great for learning too.

Explore the CDC website to learn more about best practices. Also, the CDC has links to many additional resources, so be sure to check it out!
Healthy Schools Campaign
The Healthy Schools Campaign has many ideas for teachers committed to improving their students' health. Here you can find the following (and more!):

Advice for teachers: The hurdles some students face when looking for health services outside of school can be frustratingly complex. If you want to help these students, start here to learn what you can do.

Lists of local events: In March, for example, the Healthy Schools Campaign will host a cooking challenge in Dallas where students will face off in creating healthy dishes. Check the site to see what's going on in your area!

Although many of the ideas presented by the Healthy Foods Campaign promote school and district-wide initiatives, you can easily cherry pick ideas to use in your classroom.
Action for Healthy Kids
Since 2002, Action for Healthy Kids has worked diligently to battle childhood obesity through promoting physical activity and responsible food choices. On this site you will find:

Tools for Schools: A list of activities and ideas all teachers can use

Events: National events that teachers may attend. Action for Healthy Kids awards grants to cover teachers' travel expenses.

In Your State: Links to local trainings and conferences.

The organization also has many volunteer opportunities in which interest teachers may participate. In summary, Action for Healthy Kids is a great organization for teachers who are fed up by unhealthy food choices in their schools' vending machines and lunchrooms.
Final Thoughts
The three organization we've discussed in this article are only the tip of the iceberg. Even when flu season has tapered off, I encourage you to continue researching best practices: healthy habits that your students will practice for the rest of their lives.
Read more:

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Promoting Students' Physical Health and Wellness

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As a teacher, you're (hopefully) diligent in helping your students stay healthy during this beast of a flu season. But promoting good health extends further than just preventing sickness. Students' overall health and wellness affect everything from their academic performance to success later in life.

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After a big move, running helped me learn to love where I live

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After a big move, running helped me learn to love where I live

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This article from NBC News is a narrative of a women who moved from the city to the suburbs. She wrote about how she felt alone when she first moved. However, when she started running around the area she moved to she realized that she wasn't. She noticed all the other people around her. At the end of the article there was a paragraph detailing the benefits of exercising outside. It's important for students to learn how doing something you enjoy, or getting outside everyday is important for their health and wellness. Taking care of yourself and your well-being is something everyone should learn. Students who enjoy taking care of themselves will live healthier lives.

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When my family moved from New York City to suburban New Jersey a year and a half ago, I was a girl with high-heeled boots, a useless MetroCard and a big chip on my shoulder. Sure, our new town was adjacent to a university, and offered many cultural options, cute coffee places and restaurants, but to me it was not home. I knew I would miss the ability to step out my door and just walk to wherever I was going. In Brooklyn, there's a certain energy in the streets - people are out and about, and you never know who or what you'll encounter just steps away from your door. Here in Princeton, the sidewalks seemed strangely quiet. Where are all the people? I wondered.

Another frustration was being car-less. In Brooklyn, our little beater was a luxury - a way to escape the city for field trips to Stone Barns, Wave Hill or apple picking. In New Jersey, having two cars is pretty much the standard. Each day when my husband took the car to work, I felt like I was stranded in a lonely episode of the "Jersey Shore." The cashier at the Rite Aid behind our house was quickly becoming my only connection with humanity. When I was with our then 6-year-old twins, we Ubered to after-school activities and even took cars to the mall when we needed a change of scenery. When my son got used to scoping out the random Toyota Camrys that would shuttle us to the local library, I knew this wasn't the best way for us to become part of our new community. Something had to change.

Then one morning after the kids went to school and my husband left for work, I stood outside the house for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of the sun beating down on my shoulders on what was an unseasonably warm fall day. Instead of heading to the gym that was within walking distance of our house, I laced up my sneakers, strapped on my fanny pack and took off running down my block.

I'd been running for a few years as part of my regular exercise routine, mostly on a treadmill but sometimes around the loop of Prospect Park. That morning, as I headed in the direction of my son's school, I wasn't really sure where I was going, or who or what I'd encounter on my run. After passing some familiar streets, I took a turn on a block I'd never been down, making a mental note of how to get back home. There was something refreshing about traversing this new territory on foot. Inside an anonymous Uber, the air was stale and stifling. Out on the sidewalk, I noticed everything from the crisp leaves that crackled under my foot strike to the sound of trucks and lawn mowers (always with the lawn mowers out here!) and even the clean smell of morning dew as I passed a small tributary. I wanted to bottle that scent and make it into a Suave body wash. It felt really great to be outside.

As I quickened my pace and began to feel the first beads of sweat, I noticed that there were, in fact, other people outside. I saw senior citizens walking their dogs, FedEx drivers delivering packages, and even other runners who I gave a small smile of solidarity to as we passed one another. It occurred to me that I wasn't alone out here at all - I just hadn't gotten out into my community.

I soon found that taking my exercise routine outdoors was a great way to get to know my neighborhood. I marveled as I passed landmarked, historic homes and even a small house with a sign offering avant-garde art classes. It was clear that there was a lot more to my town than I could see out my front window. But more than that, it was putting me in a good mood.

Joanna Paterson, certified trainer and owner of Bodiesynergy Fitness who leads outdoor bootcamp classes, says there are many benefits to exercising outdoors including breathing fresh air, vitamin D exposure which can enhance your mood and the singular focus an outdoor workout can provide that reduces the tendency to overthink.

"Sometimes an outdoor run may be the only moment in your day when you connect with the earth, feel the breeze, feel the outdoor temps and feel great about yourself," she says.

Because of my runs, I stopped talking and thinking about what I was missing and really started to embrace where I am right now.

"Finding yourself outside in nature is one of the best things you can do to regulate your brain and body, and also find yourself feeling more connected to your surroundings," says Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, a registered psychologist and author of "Discipline Without Damage." "Movement is hugely important to our physical and mental health, allowing for giant squirts of serotonin to flood our brains and have us feeling happier and more settled."

Dr. Lapointe also told me that getting out in nature would not just help with my own mental health and overall well-being, it would be beneficial to my kids, too. "The research on neighborhoods and healthy child development suggests that feeling connected to and at home in one's neighborhood leads to better outcomes," she says. "It's no wonder that an activity such as running in one's neighborhood can be a brilliant thing when adapting to huge changes."

After that day, I made it a point to take my workout outside whenever I could, even running in the rain one morning (which, if you've done it, you know can be oddly satisfying!). Now when I look out my front window of my house, I see that my community is actually pretty outdoorsy. There are always runners or cyclists passing by, and in fact, there are even a whole network of trails I've just begun to explore.

Now, over a year into living here, I have my own car, a little yellow subcompact that I can take to the grocery store or the library or wherever else we need to go. But as freeing as it is to be able to just get up and go, there's still nothing that beats putting on my sneakers and running and - like moving to a new town - not always knowing where the next step will take me.

How I did it: More real-life stories

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After a big move, running helped me learn to love where I live

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When my family moved from New York City to suburban New Jersey a year and a half ago, I was a girl with high-heeled boots, a useless MetroCard and a big chip on my shoulder. Sure, our new town was adjacent to a university, and offered many cultural options, cute coffee places and restaurants, but to me it was not home.

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Podcast and article: Dr. Matthew Walker on Sleep for Enhancing Learning, Creativity, Immunity, and Glymphatic System

https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/matthew-walker

Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Dr. Matthew Walker sat down for a podcast that people can listen to before/after reading the article. In our fast paced lives people do not appreciate the importance of sleep. Without sufficient sleep, our ability to learn and acquire new memories, begins to rapidly break down. People who are sleep deprived tend to avoid social interaction, Dr. Walker calls loneliness a “contagion of sleep loss”. Sleep loss is a key factor in the pathophysiology of alzheimer's disease. When we aren’t getting deep sleep this leads to an increased production of amyloid-beta, a toxic protein that aggregates and forms plaques in the brain. When the protein is deposited in the brain, people get even worse sleep and even more plaques build, a vicious cycle.

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What You Need To Know About Food Allergies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/what-you-need-to-know-about-food-allergies/2018/12/07/56d4838e-f1af-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html?utm_term=.e592f719b6d7

This article, from The Washington Post, goes over everything about food allergies. They define it as an abnormal and overactive response from your immune system to something that it shouldn't react to. Children accumulate allergies to foods when they're young, but it's common for those to resolve. The difference between a food allergy and an intolerance is explained along with common symptoms someone might have if having an allergic reaction. The diagnosis and treatments of food allergies are also touched on. Suggestions are given for what someone might swap out a problem food for. For example, eliminating a problem food from one's diet can rob them of certain nutrients. Eating leafy green vegetables and adding safe protein into the diet will make up for those lost nutrients. This article could be used to inform parents and teachers about food allergies. Allergies are very common, so addressing the subject in class wouldn't be a stretch. The teacher could use the information in the article to formulate a lesson to teach the students more about it and awareness.

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Article Title: Why do we need so much sleep?
Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3076707/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/why-do-we-need-so-much-sleep/#.XMcSoy2ZOu4
The article is on sleep from NBC News states that sleep is an anabolic or building process. We sleep because it helps to restore the bodies energy supply. Our body does most of the repair work when we are asleep, it rebuilds and restores the muscle tissue. The article compared our bodies to a car. A car can’t keep going and going without an oil change, our bodies are the same way. Our bodies can’t function without a “full tune-up.” Without the right amount of sleep we won’t be able to work or think as well as we would be able to if we were fully rested. When we don’t get enough sleep its affects our moods, personality, and sense of humor as we become irritable and less tolerant. In the PK-4th grade classroom teachers can have students get into small groups to create a poster on the effects of not having enough sleep. They will learn why it’s important to have enough sleep, but will have to determine what happens to us physically when we wouldn’t get enough sleep and how that affects our performance in the classroom as we learn and engage with other students.

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Title: Six to Eight Hours of Sleep a Night Might Be the Sweet Spot for Sleep
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/well/live/six-to-8-hours-a-night-may-be-the-sweet-spot-for-sleep.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Fwell-sleep&action=click&contentCollection=mind&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection

The news source I used to find this article was The New York Times and the health topic it falls under is Personal Health and Wellness. The article talks about why people should get at least six to eight hours of sleep and the benefits that comes out of it. It also talks about how getting too much sleep increases different risks. The information in this article pertains to teaching health to elementary students because it is important for students to get enough sleep, but not too much. Students need to know the information about their sleep schedule. If they are not getting enough sleep, it may effect their achievement in different places. In the classroom, teachers can share this article with the students and talk to them about getting enough sleep or if they get too much, or not enough. They can also teach the students to track their sleep schedule and find out if they are getting too much, or not enough.