Health and P.E. Standards

Health Core Standards

Health education, integral to the success of students in Utah’s educational setting, provides opportunities for students to acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for life-long, health-enhancing behaviors. Schools can better achieve their basic educational mission if students are healthy and fit physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. Habits that young people establish will impact their future health status in a positive or negative manner. Schools share the responsibility with parents and communities to help prevent unnecessary injury, disease, and chronic health conditions that lead to a low quality of life, disability, or early death. In addition, positive attitudes and behaviors developed early in life help to prevent many of the social and educational problems that confront society, including failure to complete high school, drug addiction, broken homes, unemployment, and criminal behavior.

The primary goal of Utah’s Health Education Core Curriculum is to develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviors essential to become “health-literate.” A health-literate person understands the medically accurate principles of health promotion, and disease prevention and is able to apply the knowledge to personal attitudes and behaviors that support healthy living.

Physical Education Core Standards

The goal of physical education is to develop healthy, responsible students who have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to work together in groups, think critically, and participate in a variety of activities that lead to a lifelong healthy lifestyle. Research tells us that students who are physically active for 60 minutes a day have higher self-confidence and more active synapses in the brain, experience a decrease in chronic illnesses, and are less likely to be absent from school. Such students are ready for career and college success. Time given to physical activity in school must not only be incorporated, but of the highest quality.

The Physical Education Core utilizes appropriate instructional practices to develop competence and confidence in a variety of lifetime activity and movement forms, including sports, dance, outdoor recreation, and physical fitness activities. The emphasis is on providing success and enjoyment for all students. Knowledge of the relationship between proper nutrition and consistent fitness regimen is the common thread running through the core. Students develop life skills through cooperative and competitive activity participation, and learn the value of a physically active life.