Health for Life provides the keys necessary for adopting healthy habits and committing to healthy living in high school and throughout the life span. The text covers all of the components of personal well-being, including physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health. It provides students the knowledge in making healthy choices and fosters the skill development required for taking healthy actions.
Health for Life helps students in these ways:
- Analyze how key influences affect their health and wellness, such as family, peers, media, and technology
- Explore consumer topics and use appropriate resources to find answers to challenging questions
- Sharpen their interpersonal communication skills as they share health knowledge; debate controversial topics; demonstrate refusal, negotiation, and refusal skills; manage interpersonal conflicts; and promote healthy living among their peers
- Use decision-making skills and apply healthy living skills as they identify solutions to problems posed
- Evaluate their own health habits as they relate to a variety of behaviors
- Create goals for behavior change and establish plans for healthy living
- Communicate health information with family and advocate for healthy living at home and in their communities
- Discover how health and technology intersect on various topics
The text is divided into seven units of 20 chapters. The chapters help students explore a range of topics, including mental health, nutrition, physical activity, stress management, healthy relationships, avoiding destructive habits, and making good health choices throughout life.
Health for Life has an abundance of features that help students connect with content in personal ways and retain the information. Here's a glance at some of those features:
- Lesson Objectives, Lesson Vocabulary, Comprehension Check, and Chapter Review help students prepare to dive in to the material, understand it, and retain it (standard NHES 1).
- Connect spurs students to analyze various influences on their health and wellness (standard NHES 2).
- Consumer Corner aids students in exploring consumer health issues (standard NHES 3).
- Healthy Communication gets students to use and expand their interpersonal communication skills as they share their views about various health topics (standard NHES 4).
- Skills for Healthy Living and Making Healthy Decisions help students learn and practice self-management so they can make wise choices related to their health and wellness (standard NHES 5).
- Planning for Healthy Living assists students in applying what they've learned as they set goals and establish plans for behavior change (standard NHES 6).
- Self-Assessment offers students the opportunity to evaluate their health habits and monitor improvement in health behaviors (standard NHES 7).
- Take It Home and Advocacy in Action prepare students to advocate for health at home and in their communities (standard NHES 8).
- Health Science and Health Technology focus on the roles of science and technology as they rellate to health and where science and technology intersect regarding health issues.
- Living Well News challenges students to integrate health literacy, math, and language skills to better understand a current health issue.
In addition, Health for Life is reinforced by its online resources for teachers and students. Following are highlights of these two invaluable resources.
Teacher Web Resource
The Teacher Web Resource contains the following:
- Complete lesson plans; the first three lessons have a corresponding PowerPoint slide show
- An answer key to all worksheets and quizzes
- A test package that includes tests for each chapter; tests consist of multiple-choice, true-or-false, fill-in-the-blank, and short essay questions
All lesson plans and assessments support identified learning objectives. Each lesson plan includes these features:
- Preparing the Lesson (lesson objectives and preparation)
- Bell Ringer (a journal question for students, or a quiz or activity to begin class)
- Lesson Focus (main points of the lesson paired with a student worksheet)
- Lesson Application (main activity paired with a worksheet)
- Reflection and Summary (lesson review)
- Evaluate (student quiz or test or worksheet review)
- Reinforcing the Lesson (Take It Home and Challenge activities)
Student Web Resource
The Student Web Resource contains these features:
- All worksheets, quizzes, and other materials referred to in the lesson plans
- Vocabulary flip cards and other interactive elements from the iBook edition
- Expanded discussion of selected topics that are marked by web icons in the text
- Review questions from the text, presented in an interactive format for students to fill out to check their level of understanding
Delivering the content that will help students value and adopt healthy lifestyles, and loaded with the features and online resources that will help students understand and retain the content, Health for Life promises to be one of the most crucial texts for students today.
About the Author: Karen E. McConnell, PhD, a professor at Pacific Lutheran University, is a certified health education specialist (CHES) and has taught at the university level for more than 15 years in areas related to health and fitness education, curriculum and assessment, and exercise science. She has written or contributed to over a dozen book chapters and texts, including the teacher resources for Fitness for Life (fifth and sixth editions). She is a recipient of the Arthur Broten Young Scholar Award and has received the University Professional of the Year Award from the Washington Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance for contributions made to state standards in health and fitness. She enjoys running, having completed 38 half marathons and one marathon. As a resident of the Pacific Northwest, she enjoys participating in most outdoor activities.
Dr. Charles B. ("Chuck") Corbin, PhD, is professor emeritus in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion at Arizona State University. He coauthored two health series for use in grades K-8 and is senior author of several award-winning elementary, middle school, high school, and college texts, including Fitness for Life: Elementary School, Fitness for Life: Middle School, the sixth edition of Fitness for Life, all winners of Texty Awards (Text and Academic Authors Association, or TAA), and Concepts of Physical Fitness (17th edition), winner of the McGuffey Award (TAA). His books are the most widely adopted public school and college texts in the area of fitness, health, and wellness. Dr. Corbin is internationally recognized as an expert in physical activity, health, and wellness promotion and youth physical fitness. He has presented keynote addresses at more than 40 state AHPERD conventions, made major addresses in more than 15 countries, and has presented numerous named lectures. Among his many honors are the Alliance Scholar and Gulick Awards (Society of Health and Physical Education Professionals, formerly AAHPERD), Cureton Lecturer (ACSM), Healthy American Fitness Leaders Award (President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition and National Jaycees), NASPE Hall of Fame, and Heterington Award (National Academy of Kinesiology). He served for more than 20 years as a member of the Advisory Board of Fitnessgram and was the first chair of the Science Board of the President's Council (PCFSN).
David E. Corbin, PhD, taught health education at the high school level for many years before beginning a career in health education at the college level. He is emeritus professor of health education and public health at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he taught for over 30 years. He has authored, coauthored, or edited four other health-related books and is a fellow and lifetime member of the American School Health Association. Corbin received the Mohan Singh Award for humor in health education and health communication from the American Public Health Association. He was also named the Nebraska Health Professional of the Year by the Nebraska Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and he received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Corbin has also appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and You Bet Your Life with Bill Cosby. In his leisure time, he enjoys cycling, walking, traveling, and singing and playing guitar.
Terri D. Farraar, PhD, is a visiting assistant professor and director of the Bachelor of Arts in Kinesiology Program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She has taught health and fitness at the high school level for 20 years, and teaches health and fitness pedagogy at Pacific Lutheran. She is a member of SHAPE America--Society of Health and Physical Educators (formerly AAHPERD) and of the Washington chapter of SHAPE America. She is also a member of the American Association for Health Education, the Association of Applied Sport Psychology, and the Alliance of Women Coaches. She enjoys traveling, working out, and coaching fastpitch softball.
