Health and Physical Education
The Health and Physical Education domain tests health literacy, covering nutrition, hygiene, safety, mental health, relationships, and substance awareness, alongside movement competence: locomotor, non-locomotor, and manipulative skills, fitness components, and the design of lessons in which students are genuinely active. Items typically describe a lesson or a health scenario and ask what to change.
Movement and instruction
- Skill themes: traveling (walk, run, hop, jump, skip, gallop, slide, leap), balancing, weight transfer, rolling, throwing, catching, kicking, striking, and dribbling.
- A strong practice task gives every student many turns, a clear cue, a demonstration, and specific feedback ("step with the opposite foot").
- Progressions run from static to dynamic, self to partner to small-sided game, and force to accuracy.
Activity and fitness
- Aim for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) for at least half of class time.
- Health-related fitness components: cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
- Warm-ups should be dynamic; static stretching belongs after activity, not as the opener.
Health content
- Five food groups, balance and variety, nutrient density versus empty calories, and reasonable portions.
- Hygiene and handwashing, dental care, sleep, and stress management.
- Safety: helmets, water safety, fire, pedestrian and sun safety; refusal skills and telling a trusted adult.
Worked example
In a 30-minute lesson, students spend 18 minutes sitting in lines waiting for turns and are vigorously active for 12 minutes. Reasoning: MVPA is 12 out of 30 minutes, or 40%, below the 50% target of 15 minutes. The fix is structural, not motivational: replace elimination games and single-file lines with small-sided games and stations, keep an equipment ratio near 2:1, start an instant activity at the door, and rehearse a 30-second transition signal. The same lesson content can then reach the target.
Traps that cost marks
- Elimination games, which bench the students who most need practice.
- Using exercise as punishment, which teaches children to associate activity with consequences.
- Static stretching as the warm-up.
- Labeling foods "good" or "bad" instead of discussing balance and frequency.
- Posting fitness scores publicly rather than recording them privately.