2010 Blue Apple Awards – Recipient Essays
Parr’s Ridge Primary Elementary School – Mt. Airy, MD
2010 Blue Apple Health Education Award Recipient – with Distinction
Parr’s Ridge Primary Elementary School offers a comprehensive health education program that teaches through skills-based and rigorous instruction. Driven by the National and State Health Education Standards along with county curricula, instruction focuses on mastery of health literacy and promotes divergent thinking skills. Students are encouraged to engage in real-life learning experiences through differentiated lessons that strive to meet the needs of every learner. Throughout the school year, kindergartners receive 30 minutes of health instruction each week, while first and second graders receive 60 minutes. Student-centered lessons are developed and tailored to meet the needs of the learners in our population. Comprehension of knowledge is evaluated using an array of formative and summative assessments. Daily instruction incorporates areas of mental health, personal health, substance abuse prevention, growth and development, safety and injury prevention, nutrition, and disease prevention. The staff of Parr’s Ridge places an emphasis on healthy behaviors. Parr’s Ridge has a culture that values health and supports the health experiences offered to all students. The staff works together to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to live long, healthy lifestyles.
Principal: Ann Marie Blonkowski Health Educator: Ashley Bacon
Frankfort Middle School – Ridgeley, WV
2010 Blue Apple Health Education Award Recipient – with Distinction
Frankfort Middle School students receive an extensive comprehensive health education program that includes a documented, well-planned, and sequential curriculum that address all dimensions of health every year in grades six through eight. The health curriculum addresses and integrates education within a range of categorical health problems at developmentally appropriate ages. Lessons focus on the national and state health education standards necessary to meet students’ needs. Health education utilizes skills-based, research-based programs and technology to provide in-depth content and interactive tasks to enhance learning and encourage positive attitudes and healthy behaviors in today’s teens. It provides students the opportunity to develop and demonstrate increasingly sophisticated health-related knowledge and skills. For example, the seventh and eighth grade students participate in an activity called, “Kids Teaching Kids.” The students create board and activity games utilizing prevention skills to teach to students in the primary schools. One seventh grader sums it up, “Eat healthy, stay healthy, and most importantly, be healthy.”
Principal: Susan Long Health Educator: Susan Ray
Havre de Grace Middle School – Havre de Grace, MD
2010 Blue Apple Health Education Award Recipient
The health education curriculum at Havre de Grace Middle School is provided to every student in grades six through eight. Students are provided the current state curriculum in many creative and innovative lessons including student assessments. Students learn lifelong skills such as decision making and refusal skills which can be applied to solve many problems they will face in today’s society. Each student is exposed to current topics while learning with a hands-on approach. The students learn in a non-threatening environment allowing them to ask personal questions. Students also learn the importance of healthy eating, fitness and avoiding drugs by examining and researching the effects on their individual lives. The Health and Physical Education Department works closely together to combine topics which are covered in both curriculums and to help reinforce important and overlapping concepts. One eighth grade student summarizes, “My health education has been very important to my success in middle school. What I have learned will help me to make the right decisions and therefore help me succeed in life.”
Principal: Glenn Jensen Health Educator: Angela Taddia
