Healthy Relationships for Students: Teaching Students About Healthy Relationships

Summary:  This is a great site for helping pre-teen and teenage students (6th graders) understand the differences between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship. It provides several examples of what a healthy relationship looks like, and what warning signs to watch out for if you believe you might be in an unhealthy relationship. Students would visit this site as a homework assignment and come to class the next day to discuss what they learn and how they can start creating healthy relationships.

Integration: I would link this to a reading unit for grade six. Students would be assigned to different groups based on reading level and each group would read a different book tying to a similar theme. Each group would then analyze the relationship between two characters in the book that they were reading and determine whether or not it was a healthy relationship. Students would then be able to present this information in different ways including a poster, a presentation, a play, or through a recorded short film they made themselves. This gives students the opportunity to analyze a healthy relationship while also tying into the common core standard of citing specific evidence and using inferences.

National Health Education Standards (NHES): 

• 1.8.1: Describe characteristics of healthy relationships.
  • HBO 1: Establish and maintain healthy relationships
• 1.8.2: Explain the qualities of a healthy dating relationship.
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• 1.8.3: Differentiate healthy and unhealthy relationships.
  • HBO 1
• 1.8.4: Describe healthy ways to express affection, love, and friendship.
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• 2.8.1: Explain how perceptions of norms influence healthy and unhealthy sexual practices, behaviors, and relationships.

Core Content Standards: 

• 6.1: Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.