Are you a middle school health science instructor looking for ways to save time in your classroom? Many teachers know the benefits of a well organized lesson planbook, but that can take years to develop. A health science textbook can only take you so far, and for a middle school program, you spend a lot of extra time ensuring lessons are age-appropriate and engaging.
One teacher at Brantley County Middle School, GA has found a health science curriculum that saves him hours per week. Tyler Page had a hard time when he first started teaching middle school healthcare science. Luckily for Tyler, he found the HealthCenter21 eLearning curriculum, which solves all of his challenges and saves him time. So much so that he has 10 extra hours with his family per week. The problems that HealthCenter21 has solved for Tyler are:
- Spending too much time on lesson planning and grading
- No middle school health science curriculum available
- Classroom management problems
- Differentiating lessons for varying student abilities
Saving Time with a Ready-to-Use Lesson Planbook and Resources
Like any health science instructor, the biggest problem for Tyler was always the amount of time he spends lesson planning and grading. Because HealthCenter21 includes a ready-to-use lesson planbook and other resources, his planning time has been significantly reduced.
“I’m not having to spend hours and hours before or after school creating lesson plans. With HealthCenter21, the amount of time I spend with lesson plans has been cut in half. Being married and having two small children, I’m headed home at 3:30 to play with my kids. It has given me back family time.”
Not only do the included lesson plans and resources save Tyler time, but the automatic grading has made a huge difference:
“I think about how many times I’ve had to sit here and grade papers or Scantrons, or wait on something to get back. All that’s done, it’s cut out. You just roll the grades over to the gradebook.”
So how much more time does Tyler have to spend with his family, now that the burdens of lesson planning and grading are gone?
“HealthCenter21 has saved me probably close to 10 hours a week... If you look at an hour of lesson planning and an hour of grading a day. I’m sure the other teachers probably hate me when I come bouncing in the back door and don’t have a worry in the world. Everything the students and I need is right there. You can’t put a value on that.”
Overcoming a Lack of Middle School Healthcare Science Curriculum
Another problem that cost Tyler a lot of time was finding curriculum appropriate for his middle school students. Most health science textbooks are written for high school programs, so he struggled to pull resources together. Even when looking at the Georgia DOE website to look at his standards and provided resources, he found most of the proposed lesson plans say "To be developed at a later time."
Tyler believes one reason for the lack of curriculum is that middle school healthcare science programs are still up and coming. Compared to high school health science courses, middle school ones are few and far between. HealthCenter21 helped Tyler in providing the right content in the right context for his students.
“HealthCenter21 is a perfect instructional tool for what I’m trying to do in here. It’s the perfect tool for the job. I’m able to use it for exactly what I need.
A new middle school health science teacher can save themselves a whole lot of headache with trying to go out and find all of these resources and materials… They could simply go to a one stop shop and it’s done for you.”
Improved Classroom Management and Structure
When Tyler first started teaching health science, he faced a number of classroom management problems. Any time students were waiting on him or other students, that’s when behavior issues would start up.
With HealthCenter21, Tyler has seen a change in his students’ behavior in the classroom. There’s no downtime or waiting on other students to keep moving forward.
“It’s so organized and has so much structure. The students walk in and they already know what they have to do. The work time in class has been increased because I don’t have to explain what we’re going to do each day. By having HealthCenter21 you’re maximizing your instruction time.
Students are not walking in and waiting on me to get started. If I’m doing hall duty, they just come in, log in, and get to work. They’re not waiting on me for anything.”
Reaping the Benefits of Differentiated Instruction
At Brantley County Middle School, Tyler’s courses are considered to be Connections classes. As any middle school electives teacher knows, they have a greater variety in student knowledge and ability compared to the core academic classes. HealthCenter21 has helped Tyler’s students learn in the way that is best for each of them:
“One thing I like the most about HealthCenter21 is it being self-paced for students. Everyone’s at their different spot. I get such a variety of students in here, and they’re not affecting each other one way or another. No one’s waiting for someone else to finish.”
Tyler has also had great success with differentiated instruction due to HealthCenter21. He has students with IEPs and other needs that he struggled to help before using HealthCenter21.
“I have some students come in here and plug in headphones, the ones that need to have it, like one with an IEP to be read to… that’s taken care of. Before HealthCenter21 I had to figure out a way to make it work for the gifted students and make it work for those who need extra time, extended time, pulled out, or read to.
That was tough. In the core academic classrooms, they split those kids up for the most part, but we don’t have that in Connections. I get a large variety of Lexile scores, so HealthCenter21 helps me deal with that.”
