When teaching health science to middle school students, you are responsible for introducing learners to several different health science subjects. This will be the first time many students learn about some of the critical topics you will cover.
You may be concerned that your students receive age-appropriate lesson material to their experience as middle schoolers. You also want to make sure you are providing them with high-quality content that will help them grow academically and be prepared for more advanced material in the future.
Based on what we’ve heard from teachers, seven of the most popular lesson plan topics for your middle school health science class are:
- Health Career Exploration
- Health Care Careers
- Client Status
- Legal and Ethical Responsibilities
- Communications
- Medical Math
- Wellness and Nutrition
Below, you’ll find more information about each of these health science lesson plans and how they can help you teach your middle school students.
1. Health Career Exploration
When teaching middle schoolers health science, the perfect place to start is a lesson on health career exploration. For students contemplating the CTE health careers pathway, it’s important to ensure students are fully aware of the opportunities and challenges facing them if they pursue an occupation in healthcare.
A solid health career exploration activity introduces students to opportunities in each of the five healthcare career pathways:
- Diagnostic Services
- Therapeutic Services
- Health Information
- Support Services
- Biotechnology Research and Development
When students have learned about each of the pathways, you can introduce them to specific careers within each path and allow them to explore the diverse possibilities working in a health science occupation can offer them.
You can also look here for more recommendations on How to Teach Health Science Careers in Middle School.
2. Healthcare Careers
A natural next step for teaching health science to a middle school audience is instruction on healthcare careers.
While health career exploration aims to familiarize students with their options for working in an occupation in the CTE health science pathway, healthcare careers lessons take a step further in the learning process.
Healthcare careers lessons look at the specific skills, knowledge, degree, and certification requirements necessary for students to achieve their occupational goals.
A good healthcare careers lesson leads students to select a career aligned with their personal values and interests and helps them understand the steps they will need to take to work in the field of their choice.
After completing instruction in healthcare careers, students are more likely to be motivated to work toward a particular academic and vocational goal that they’ll keep in mind for the remainder of your class and beyond.
3. Client Status
After a thorough introduction to the possibilities available to middle school students in the health science careers pathway, a logical next step is to teach the most basic element of healthcare, measuring client status.
Client status consists of accurately taking and recording body measurements and vital signs. In a good client status lesson, your middle schoolers will learn about different types of body measurement for infants and adults and the type of equipment medical professionals use to make these measurements.
Students will learn how to take and record basic measurements such as:
- Temperature
- Pulse
- Respiration
- Blood Pressure
Learning to measure client status is a fundamental aspect of healthcare essential to students’ progress in the CTE health science pathway.
4. Legal and Ethical Responsibilities
Even at a beginner level, it’s paramount that learners understand a healthcare worker’s unique legal and ethical responsibilities. As future healthcare workers, students need to know specific regulations that will affect them daily.
Legal and ethical responsibilities lessons can cover several measures particular to working in healthcare, including:
- The Patient’s Bill of Rights
- Scope of Practice
- Tort law
- Contract law
- Confidentiality and privileged communication
- Ethics
When you introduce students to their unique responsibilities early in the learning process, they’ll better appreciate how essential understanding the law is to providing healthcare of the highest standard.
5. Communications
Learning solid communication skills is appropriate for health science students of every age, including middle school. In healthcare occupations, it’s critical to communicate with clients in a manner that is both professional and sensitive to their particular situations.
In communication lessons geared towards middle school health science students, learners discover the fundamentals of interpersonal communication and different types of communication technology used in medical care. They’ll also learn how to overcome personal, cultural, physical, and environmental barriers when communicating with patients.
By developing compassionate communication skills early in their education, students will be ready to work directly with patients sooner and be well on their way to becoming sensitive healthcare professionals.
6. Medical Mathematics
Healthcare workers frequently use mathematical skills as part of providing proper patient care. Middle school is a great time to review basic math that students will use when working in health science.
Since medical math is part of everything from measuring and administering doses of medicine to patient intake and output, students need to be fluent in measurements according to the household, metric, and apothecary systems.
In particular, students should be to work with:
- Whole numbers
- Decimals
- Fractions
- Percentages
- Estimates
By learning and continually reviewing medical math, students are less likely to make crucial mistakes later when working directly with patients in a clinical setting.
7. Wellness and Nutrition
Perhaps the most long-lasting health science lesson you can provide your students is a quality overview of wellness and nutrition. Especially during middle school, young students need to understand the basics of their personal wellbeing.
Learning nutrition and wellness early on will help students as they continue their studies in school and begin to make decisions that affect their health.
A comprehensive nutrition and wellness lesson equips learners with the resources to create their own wellness plan and pursue holistic health.
Some topics you can explore in your nutrition and wellness lessons include:
- Holistic health and healthy living
- Nutrition, food groups, and diets
- Choosing healthcare providers
- Prescriptions and medications
- Effectively managing stress
When you teach wellness and nutrition in your middle school health science courses, you’re giving your students the knowledge they need to make better choices and pursue a healthy lifestyle.
Teach Health Science with a Comprehensive Curriculum
As a middle school health science teacher, it’s essential to find appropriate resources for your students to prepare them for future coursework in the health careers pathway and eventually a health occupation.
Each of the topic areas in this article is an excellent fit for students to explore during your middle school class. But when you teach all of these topics together in your middle school curriculum, you'll be able to provide your learners a strong foundation in health science.
If you need to cover many or or all of these subjects in your health science classes, consider the Health Science curriculum from iCEV. iCEV offers a comprehensive solution that provides teachers with resources to cover the entire health careers pathway, starting in middle school.
Click below to learn more about iCEV and discover if it's the right fit for your classroom.
