Grade 3 · Health Education
Quarter 2 · Week 1 · TEKS
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This Grade 3 Health Education lesson focuses on helping students distinguish between healthy and harmful influences of friends and others. Students will learn to identify characteristics of healthy and unhealthy friendships and understand the value of respectful communication. The lesson supports the development of socio-emotional health, self-regulation, and healthy relationships as outlined in TEKS standards for mental health and wellness.
Students should have a basic understanding of what friends are and have experienced simple social interactions with peers. They should be familiar with the concept of feelings and expressing themselves verbally.
Healthy influences are actions or behaviors from friends or others that encourage positive choices, kindness, safety, and respect. Harmful influences are those that encourage unsafe, unkind, or disrespectful behaviors that can hurt oneself or others. For example, a healthy influence might be a friend encouraging you to share and include others, while a harmful influence might be a friend pressuring you to exclude someone or break rules.
Healthy friendships include trust, kindness, respect, support, and good communication. Friends listen to each other, share feelings, and help each other make good choices. Unhealthy friendships might involve bullying, exclusion, dishonesty, or pressure to do things that make someone uncomfortable or unsafe.
Respectful communication means listening carefully, speaking kindly, and expressing feelings honestly without hurting others. It helps friends solve problems, understand each other, and build strong relationships. Without respectful communication, misunderstandings and conflicts can harm friendships.
A friend encourages you to share your toys and play nicely with others. Is this a healthy or harmful influence? Explain why.
Encouraging sharing and playing nicely promotes kindness and respect, which are positive behaviors. This is a healthy influence because it supports good social skills and friendships.
This is a healthy influence because the friend is encouraging kind and respectful behavior.
A friend tells you to exclude another classmate from your group because they are different. Is this a healthy or harmful influence? Explain why.
Excluding someone because they are different is unkind and can hurt feelings. This is a harmful influence because it promotes unfair treatment and can damage friendships.
This is a harmful influence because it encourages excluding others and being unkind.
Begin by asking students to think about a time when a friend helped them or made them feel good. Write some examples on the board.
Students share their experiences of positive actions from friends and listen to others' stories.
This activity activates prior knowledge about friendships and sets a positive tone to explore healthy influences.
Present scenario cards describing different friendship situations, some showing healthy influences and others harmful influences. Read each aloud and discuss.
In small groups, students identify if the influence in each scenario is healthy or harmful and explain why.
Students practice distinguishing between healthy and harmful influences through real-life examples.
Define and discuss characteristics of healthy and unhealthy friendships using examples from the scenarios and student input.
Students list characteristics they think belong to healthy friendships and compare with unhealthy ones.
Clarifies traits that define healthy friendships and contrasts them with unhealthy ones to deepen understanding.
Introduce respectful communication. Model respectful ways to express feelings and solve problems in friendships. Facilitate role-plays where students practice these skills.
Students role-play scenarios demonstrating respectful communication and discuss how it helps friendships.
Students apply respectful communication skills to maintain healthy relationships and resolve conflicts.
Ask students to complete a worksheet where they identify healthy and harmful influences, characteristics of friendships, and examples of respectful communication.
Students complete the worksheet individually and share answers in pairs or small groups.
Assessment of students' ability to distinguish influences, describe friendships, and explain respectful communication.
In small groups, students identify if the influence in each scenario is healthy or harmful and explain why.
What is one example of a healthy influence a friend can have?
A friend encouraging you to be kind to others.
Name two characteristics of a healthy friendship.
Trust and kindness.
Is a friend who listens when you are upset a healthy or harmful friend?
A healthy friend because they listen and support you.
Why is respectful communication important?
It helps friends understand each other and solve problems without hurting feelings.
How can you respond to a harmful influence using respectful communication?
Say no politely and explain your feelings calmly.
Provide sentence starters for describing healthy and harmful influences. Use pictures or drawings to illustrate friendship characteristics. Pair students with peers for guided discussions.
Use simple language and visuals to explain key vocabulary. Model respectful communication with gestures and expressions. Provide bilingual glossary for key terms if needed.
Challenge students to create their own scenarios showing healthy and harmful influences. Encourage students to role-play conflict resolution using respectful communication. Have students write a short story about a healthy friendship.
Encourage students to talk with their family about what makes a good friend and share examples of respectful communication they use at home.
In this lesson, students learned to distinguish between healthy and harmful influences from friends and others. They identified characteristics of healthy and unhealthy friendships and practiced respectful communication skills. These skills help students build positive relationships and make safe, kind choices with their peers.
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