Health Opportunities Through Physical Education

This innovative new textbook, with a full suite of related resources, has been created to support student development and enhancement of healthy behaviors that influence their lifestyle choices and fitness, health, and wellness.

A key feature of this curriculum is the complete integration of physical education and health concepts and skills to maximize student interest, learning, and application. This objective was accomplished by combining the expertise of our author teams from two related textbooks--Fitness for Life, Sixth Edition, and Health for Life.

This is not just a health textbook with a few physical education concepts thrown in. School systems that want a single textbook to help them address both physical education and health education standards will find that this book provides them a unique and cost-effective option.

Health Opportunities Through Physical Education is available in print and digital formats, including an iBooks interactive version for iPads plus other e-book formats that students can use across a variety of platforms.

Part I, Fitness for Life, will help students become physically literate individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to enjoy a lifetime of healthful physical activity. The book will guide students in becoming informed consumers on matters related to lifelong physical activity and fitness, taking responsibility for setting individualized goals, and making their own plans for active living. To accomplish this overarching goal, they learn a variety of self-management skills, including self-assessment. The program is based on established educational theory, which is outlined in the teacher web resources. And they learn all of this through a combination of classroom and physical activity lessons that meet national, state, and local physical activity guidelines and help instill a love for lifetime fitness activities.

Part I also enables students to achieve the following goals:

• Meet college and career readiness standards by learning and using critical thinking, decision making, and problem-solving skills

• Use the Stairway to Lifetime Fitness concept, created by author Chuck Corbin, to encourage higher-order learning (move from dependence to independence)

• Perform self-assessments, including all tests in the Fitnessgram battery and the Presidential Youth Fitness Program

Part I includes many features that actively engage students by allowing them to:

• Assess their own fitness and other health and wellness factors to determine personal needs and assess progress resulting from healthy lifestyle planning.

• Use Taking Charge and Self-Management features to learn self-management skills (e.g., goal setting, self-monitoring, self-planning) for adopting healthy lifestyles.

• Learn key concepts and principles, higher-order information, and critical thinking skills that provide the basis for sound decision making and personal planning.

• Do reading and writing assignments as well as calculations that foster college and career readiness.

• Try out activities that are supported by lesson plans offered in the teacher web resources and that can help students be fit and active throughout their lives.