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Health Competency Seminar: What topic is your group considering for the Health Competency Seminar? How does it connect to the broader themes of Active Health, such as physical literacy, healthy and active living, social and community health, or mental well-being? Be sure to explain why this topic is relevant to your group and how it aligns with the goals of the Health Competency Seminar. Consider how you will create an engaging learning experience for your peers by incorporating interactive elements such as class discussions, group activities, or hands-on experiences. How will you balance both providing informative content and allowing for meaningful peer participation?

I have discussed possible topics for the seminar with 2 of 4 group members. We have yet to decide on what exactly our topic will be, but we have narrowed it down to just a few options. One option we are strongly considering that I am particularly interested in, is promoting active living for youth. This broad and important topic can be broken down to cover other aspects of active health such as physical literacy, social and community health, or mental well-being. My blog this week will discuss how we can cover these topics and incorporate interactive activities to engage the class during our seminar. 

Promoting active living inherently fosters physical literacy. Providing youth with the information to find a form of activity that best suits them will motivate them to progress in whatever the activity is. As they incorporate activity into their lives, both their physical competence and confidence will grow as they develop skills and understanding of their chosen physical task. To help youth discover forms of physical activity that best suit them, it’s important educators display a diverse range of different modes of physical activity. During our seminar, we could use this as an opportunity for class engagement. We could have our classmates brainstorm different modes of exercise that are suitable for promoting to youth. 

Active living often involves participation in a range of communal activities. Whether it be team sports, spin classes or running groups, these are just a few of the many examples of physical activities that can contribute to social and community health. From my personal experience, growing up playing many team sports helped me to connect with my community and allowed me to form many social connections that I hold to this day. I no longer play team sports but I use weightlifting as a way to remain fit. Not only does it help me stay active, I also connect with many friends at the gym and have met lots of people through the gym community. These are two examples of the connection between active living and community from my own life. In the seminar, we could interact with classmates to hear how active living has made an impact on their social and community health. Sharing these stories could allow for classmates to connect and collaborate in their active communities. 

Promoting an active lifestyle to the youth can improve their lives and teach them habits that are crucial to living a long and healthy life. My blog has touched on how physical literacy can be inherently taught through promoting an active lifestyle, and how living an active lifestyle can open many doors to new social opportunities in your community. Both of these benefits of active living can positively improve physical and mental health by keeping active daily and positively contributing to the community. Ultimately, I believe this topic would make for a great seminar, our group has not yet decided if it will be the one we do, but I will make sure I state my case for why I believe it’s important.

Laine, right off the bat, your statement regarding active health being something you have integrated into your life since a young age is a blatant lie. I have known you for nearly two decades and have always considered your active ability to be subpar and lackluster. However, I can relate to the statements you made about Gordon Head being very walkable. Growing up, I too got in much of my daily activity by walking around the neighbourhood. I love that we share the memory of playing football at lunch hour. I do find it strange that you left out the part that you would routinely get embarrassed by me and my fellow grade six friends beating you grade 8s in the lunchtime games. All jokes aside, I enjoyed reading your blog mainly because of all the connections I could make to my childhood. I bet our similar experiences will aid us in working together in the pod group.

Matt, I love how your blog stresses the importance of child development and active health. I have also run sports camps for children and agree that it demonstrates how children can develop good habits for enjoyable physical activity. You highlight sleep, exercise and diet all affect a child’s mental health and physical wellness and how using stand-up desks and or movement breaks can help to cut down on sitting time. From personal experience I couldn’t agree more with this! I like how you integrate both methods we have discussed in class as well as your personal real-world experience to discuss useful PHE strategies.
I look forward to collaborating with you in the pod group this semester 🙂

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in Health Education: Reflect on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how it can be applied in health and physical education settings. How can UDL help create inclusive and accessible learning experiences for all students, regardless of their abilities? How might this approach be useful, not only in educational environments but in broader health promotion and community settings?

The universal design for learning notes the fact that all classrooms are diverse, and asserts the belief that every students approach to education is unique. An analogy they use in the in-class video we watched is that the unique ways students learn in class can be compared to the uniqueness of there finger prints. The three core principles of UDL, engagement, representation, action & expression, can all be applied to health and physical education. My blog post this week will break this question down into detail to discuss how these different core principals can be applied to benefit PHE and help create inclusive and accessible learning experiences for all students.

Allowing for multiple means of engagement in PHE is crucial if you want a group with diverse needs to meaningfully participate in activities. From my personal experience, PHE was usually taught from a very sport-centric approach, highlighting things such as competition and teamwork. This allowed for certain students to thrive, but many students that lacked the desire for competition or the physical/technical capabilities to compete, seemed to often be disengaged with the activity. Providing access to multiple different forms of physical activities that differ from sports such as yoga, weight lifting and running allow students to engage with something that better suits their diverse needs.

Expressing multiple means of representation in PHE is important to allow for students to connect with material. Activities should be led through different formats such as self-lead, peer collaboration and instructor lead. Its important activities be broken down to assist students who may struggle to grasp activities and concepts. In my personal experience, I found teachers often would briefly explain activities and expect the majority of students to already understand the game or activity being played. Almost always, a group of students would not be able to grasp the concept of the activity, significantly diminishing their engagement. I can see this becoming a growing issue as our community continues to diversify. New students not familiar with common PHE activities will be left clueless and struggle to represent themselves to their full capabilities. Teaching PHE through multiple means of representation will allow students to engage with each other and digest learning in multiple diverse ways. Ultimately, multiple means of representation will strengthen all core principles of UDL.

Allowing students to demonstrate learning through multiple means of action and expression improves students’ ability to digest and reciprocate things learnt in PHE. Providing students opportunities for self-assessment gives them the ability to engage with material in a way that best suits their diverse needs. This could be demonstrated in ways such as creating meal or workout plans that best suit their personal nutritional and physical needs. Allowing students to choose how they want to participate is important for meeting everyone’s individual needs. Some students may prefer to work individually, whilst others may want to collaborate with peers in small or large groups. Creating a PHE plan where all of these different needs can be met will significantly improve students’ ability to connect and learn course material.

In conclusion, the benefits that UDL can have on PHE are extensive. Its important that educators familiarize themselves with the core principles of UDL to better express them when designing PHE curriculum. From my experience, PHE was often seen as a time for fun and games and teachers often took it as an opportunity to take a break. It’s important educators use PHE time wisely to foster physical and health skills that can aid students for the rest of there lives. Fortunately, the UDL framework is an incredibly helpful tool that can be used to improve PHE for both the student and educator.

https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

CAST. (2010, January 6th). UDL at a glance – Focus and concentration music [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvKnY0g6e4