Larissa A. Spreng
Puberty is both an exciting and nerve-racking time for adolescents, parents, and teachers. It is essential that middle-schoolers have access to information about puberty so they can be knowledgeable about their bodies. This unit focuses on changes that happen during puberty and is not intended to serve as a sexual education unit.
The goal of this unit is to meet a need that is currently not addressed in the New Haven curriculum: puberty education. This unit provides kid-friendly, accurate information that allows students to view the human body through the lens of puberty, including physical changes, biological events, and social issues. Students will walk away from this unit with a healthy and positive attitude about their bodies because they possess the knowledge of how and why they work the way they do.
This unit is structured over 10 weeks. The seventh-grade curriculum focuses on several human body systems which undergo a variety of changes during puberty. Puberty is a great hook to get students invested in learning about their bodies. They have many questions about this stage of their life because they are living puberty every day.
(Developed for Genetics/Reproduction, Life Systems: Musculo-Skeletal, and Life Systems: Biochemical, grade 7; recommended for Genetics/Reproduction, Life Systems: Musculo-Skeletal, and Life Systems: Biochemical, grade 7)
