Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan

Title of Lesson Emotional Changes During Puberty 1 Grade Level 4

Lesson
Subject Physical and Health Education 1 hour
Duration/timing

Understand: Big
Idea(s)/Essential Question(s)
Know & Do: Content &
Curricular Competencies
Learning intention/Lesson
Objective
Key Question Set
Assessment
Adaptations/Modifications
 Understanding ourselves and the various aspects of health helps us develop a balanced lifestyle
 Content:
o Physical, emotional, and social changes that occur during puberty, including those
involving sexuality and sexual identity
 Emotional changes: how students’ thoughts and feelings might evolve or change
during puberty
 Curricular Competencies:
o Explore and describe strategies for managing physical, emotional, and social changes during
puberty
o Describe factors that positively influence mental well-being and self-identity
o Describe and assess strategies for promoting mental well-being
 I can recognize and describe emotional changes that occur during puberty
 I can respectfully participate in conversations about puberty and emotional changes
 I can recognize changes in my own emotions during difficult or uncomfortable conversations
 How might your thoughts and feelings change as you experience puberty?
 How might your ideas about bodies and emotions change from now until when you are experiencing
puberty?
 Assessment FOR learning: APK, observations, anecdotal records, class dialogue
 Assessment AS learning: temperature check, question box submission
 Multimodal presentation: video, PowerPoint slides, images, text
 Learners are able to represent learning in a variety of ways: oral, physical (drama), writing
 Question box offers learners an opportunity to extend their curiosities in an anonymous and safe way
 Activity offers learners an opportunity to express their learning physically, as this topic is sometimes
challenging to express with words
 Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan
Materials  Projector & screen
 Whiteboard & markers
 PowerPoint presentation
 Amaze Video
 Question Box
 Index cards
 Sticky notes (if creating wonder wall)
 KWL worksheet (if doing individual KWL)
 Pencil and paper (if doing individual reflection writing)

Activity Outline
Estimated
Elements of the lesson Teacher & students
Time
Pre-lesson 5 minutes Community Agreement
Engage students in co-creation of “Community Agreement” which is to create an environment
of trust, safety and comfort. The agreement will be written on the board and then
documented by the teacher for future use/reference, as the agreement will be revisited at the
start of each lesson.

Student ideas for Community agreement might include:

 Respect each other
 It’s okay to pass
 Questions are welcome
 Use correct terms for body parts
 Listen when others are speaking
 Classroom discussions are confidential
 It’s okay to have fun

Another framework for Community Agreement could be GROUND rules:

 G: Giggling is okay but laughing at others is not
 R: Respect for myself and others is important
 Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan
 O: Option to pass on answering questions is available to all
 U: Use dictionary words when describing the body
 N: No question is a silly question!
 D: Do use, "Someone I know…" instead of the person's name

Temperature Check  Offering students a chance to check in with themselves as to how they are feeling
about discussing the topic of puberty
 Using a thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle or fingers 1 through 5 against
their chest, ask students about their comfort or discomfort discussing, excitement or
2 minutes hesitancy to discuss the topic of puberty
 This is a practice of body awareness and emotional awareness around topics that can
be challenging for some learners. This is a practice that can be done at the beginning
and end of every lesson, so students can assess how their feelings might change over
time.

APK (Activate Prior Optional: Students can brainstorm individually through personal reflection writing, mind map
Knowledge) or KWL what they know about puberty and what initial questions they have. This can also be
5 minutes
done as a group as a mind map, KWL or wonder wall. This activity will depend on the students
and relationships within the classroom community.

Hook Video
 Show students Amaze video: Sad and Happy: Feelings Happen
3 minutes
o https://amaze.org/video/sad-and-happy-feelings-happen/
 (Can stop video at 3:00 minute mark or play through)

Introducing the Learning 5 minutes Introduce topic of puberty and emotional changes
Intention/Concept  Teacher engages students in dialogue about initial ideas they have about “What is
puberty?”
o Students are given an opportunity to turn and talk to a partner and then
share with the group (if they choose)
 Teacher offers a definition of puberty based on collective responses and additional
information
o Puberty is the time when your body, emotions and thoughts begin to
develop and change as you move from childhood to adulthood.
o Puberty starts at different times for different people. People with different
 Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan
body parts experience some of the same changes, and sometimes the
changes are different physically and emotionally for different people.
 Teacher indicates focus of today’s lesson is on emotional changes during puberty.
During future lessons we will talk about physical changes.
Activity Sequence 30 minutes Presentation and dialogue about emotional changes during puberty
 PowerPoint slide: the brain and the pituitary gland
o Puberty starts in the brain, specifically, in the pituitary gland (it looks a bit
like a cherry pit!)
o It sends out chemical messages called hormones across the body. These
hormones, tell different body parts how to grow and change during
puberty.
o Hormones play an important role during puberty, and it’s normal for
young people’s bodies to go through lots of hormonal fluctuations while
they’re growing up.
o Changes of puberty happen at different times. Similar to a “personal alarm
clock” no two clocks are set exactly the same.
 Analogy: Ask students what time they set their alarm for in order
to get to school on time. Make the connection that even though
their alarms ring at different times, they all eventually get to
school. Similarly, everyone might start puberty at different times,
which is normal, but everyone eventually arrives.
 PowerPoint slide: rollercoaster of emotions
o Hormones are also the cause of “mood swings” or changes in emotion
o Rollercoaster analogy: Mads/sads/glads
o Crushes: for some people, crushes are a normal part of puberty
 They can be exciting/scary/etc.: they can cause a lot of emotions.
 Might develop a crush on a friend, a classmate, a fictional
character, someone with the same body parts as you, or different
body parts. Not having crushes is also normal!
o Brainstorm some different emotions people could feel during puberty
 Excited, sad, frustrated, happy, lonely, self-conscious, angry, etc.
 Offer opportunities for questions and discussion as they arise
 Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan
Tableau Activity (Optional, if time persists)
 Students brainstorm a list of emotions that might be experienced during puberty
 Then, students stand up and mill around the room
 Teacher will call out an emotion experienced during puberty and a number (1-4)
 Students need make groups (of the number the teacher called out) and briefly act out
a scene or depict that emotion with their group members
 Be creative, but also respectful of your group members space and emotions

Debrief of activity and dialogue about emotions

 How did you feel engaging in that activity? What emotions did you experience?
 How might it feel to shift quickly and dramatically between emotions?
 How might mood swings affect relationships?
o Encourage students to think about how friends and family might become
confused or frustrated with someone who has unpredictable emotions.
 Can you remember when someone you know had a mood swing? Maybe it was a
sibling, a cousin, or a friend. Maybe this person was grumpy or sad and then suddenly
happy or fine. What was it like?
 How could a person dealing with mood swings manage those big changes in their
feelings? What are some specific ways you could be a good friend to someone who is
dealing with mood swings?
Closing Activity 7 minutes Introduce question box
 It is very normal for people to have a lot of questions when talking about puberty.
 The question box is your opportunity to ask any questions you have about puberty,
feelings, sex or sexuality
 Each student receives an identical card, will write a question on it, but will not write
their name (this is so it remains anonymous)
 Each student will then fold it and put it in the box
 Teacher will read each of the questions after school
 During our next lesson, teacher will read some questions and offer answers/engage
students in dialogue
 If students are struggling to develop a question, they can complete the following
sentence: "Learning about puberty makes me feel ____”
 Physical & Health Education Lesson Plan

Guidelines for Question Box

 The Question Box will only be opened by the teacher.
 If you don't know how to spell a word, then sound it out or guess.
 Do not put your names on your slips of paper.
 Feel free to change your handwriting if you are concerned that the teacher will
recognize it.
 Do not use people's names in questions.

Teacher Reflections: what

went well, what didn’t, and
how might I improve the
lesson