Getting Help and Making Healthy Choices

Summary

This closing chapter shows how influences can be positive or negative, how communicating feelings and needs helps people get what they need, and how recognizing when help is needed leads to better health decisions. Students also practice tracking healthy behaviors and asking for help with choices.

Concepts Covered

1. Positive Influence
2. Negative Influence
3. Seeking Help
4. Communicating Feelings
5. Communicating Needs
6. Recognizing Need For Help
7. Health Decision
8. Tracking Health Behaviors
9. Asking For Help With Choices

Prerequisites

This chapter builds on Influence and Communication from Chapter 1: Foundations of Health and Safe Habits, Feelings from Chapter 3: Understanding and Talking About Feelings, Personal Care Practice and Physical Activity from Chapter 5: Healthy Habits, Activity, and Germs, and Asking A Trusted Adult from Chapter 6: Staying Safe at Home, School, and Online.

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Teacher Notes: How to Use This Chapter

This is the final chapter of the Grade 1 book, and it ties together many of the skills students have practiced all year. It covers how outside influences shape health choices, how to communicate feelings and needs clearly, when and how to ask for help, and how to make and track healthy decisions. None of these ideas require the same careful tone as the personal-safety content in Chapter 6, but they do build directly on it — recognizing when you need help and knowing how to ask for it are the same muscles students practiced when learning to tell a trusted adult. Read each section aloud, pause for the discussion prompts, and let students use the MicroSims described below as guided or independent practice, depending on your classroom's technology access.

Let's Learn About Getting Help and Making Choices

Hi, friend! Today we're going to learn about the people and things that influence our choices, how to share our feelings and needs with words, and how to know when it's time to ask for help. These skills will help you make healthy choices for the rest of your life.

Positive Influence: People and Things That Help You Choose Well

Back in Chapter 1, students learned that an influence is a person, thing, or idea that affects how someone thinks or acts. Now it's time to look more closely at two kinds of influence a Grade 1 student meets every day.

A positive influence is a person, thing, or idea that helps someone make a healthy choice. A positive influence might be a family member who packs a lunch full of fruits and vegetables, a friend who invites you to play outside, or a coach who reminds the team to drink water. Positive influences make it easier, not harder, to take care of your body and feelings.

Talking points for read-aloud:

• Ask the class: "Who is someone in your life who helps you make healthy choices?"
• Explain that a positive influence isn't always a person — a favorite park, a song that makes you want to dance, or a family rule about bedtime can all be positive influences too.
• Point out that the same influence (like a friend) can be positive in one moment and negative in another, which is why noticing influences is a skill worth practicing.

Negative Influence: People and Things That Make Healthy Choices Harder

A negative influence is a person, thing, or idea that makes it harder to make a healthy choice, or that encourages an unhealthy or unsafe one. A negative influence might be an advertisement for sugary snacks, a friend who dares someone to skip washing their hands, or a show that makes staying up too late look exciting.

Recognizing a negative influence does not mean the person or thing is "bad" — it means noticing that, in this one moment, it is pulling a choice in an unhealthy direction. A Grade 1 student is learning to pause and think, "Is this helping me make a healthy choice, or making it harder?"

Before the diagram below, let's define one more term: to distinguish means to tell two things apart by noticing what makes them different.

Diagram: Positive or Negative? Influence Sorter

Positive or Negative? Influence Sorter MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: positive-or-negative-influence-sorter
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Analyze (L4) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: distinguish, examine, differentiate

Learning objective: Students distinguish positive influences from negative influences by sorting simple, everyday scenario cards into two labeled bins, matching the Grade 1 benchmark on which people or situations positively or negatively influence a health behavior.

Canvas layout: - Left area (450px): One scenario card at a time, shown as a short sentence with a simple flat illustration - Right area (150px): Two labeled bins, "Positive Influence" and "Negative Influence," plus an infobox

Visual elements: - 8 scenario cards cycling one at a time, such as: "A grandparent packs apple slices in your lunch," "A commercial makes candy look like the best snack ever," "A friend invites you to ride bikes after school," "A show makes staying up past bedtime look fun," "A coach reminds the team to drink water," "A friend dares you to skip washing your hands" - Two friendly labeled bins with icons (a sun for "Positive Influence," a cloud for "Negative Influence")

Interactive controls: - Click-to-select: student clicks the bin that matches the scenario - Button: "Next Scenario" - Button: "Reset"

Default parameters: - First scenario: "A grandparent packs apple slices in your lunch" (clearly positive, to build confidence)

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the scenario card with no label Stage 2: After the student clicks a bin, show whether it matches Stage 3: Reveal a one-sentence explanation of why the scenario is a positive or negative influence

Behavior: - Correct match: bin glows softly, gentle chime, explanation caption appears - Incorrect match: gentle prompt, "Take another look — does this make a healthy choice easier or harder?", correct bin glows softly as a hint

Instructional Rationale: This is an Analyze-level (distinguish/examine) objective, so the MicroSim has students actively sort concrete examples into two categories rather than only reciting definitions, building the pattern-recognition skill needed to notice influences in real life.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep all scenarios everyday and age-appropriate — no mention of substances or mature themes, since this Grade 1 skill focuses on everyday choices like food, activity, sleep, and hygiene.

Big Idea

Influences are all around you every day. A positive influence makes a healthy choice easier. A negative influence makes it harder. Noticing which is which helps you choose well.

Communicating Feelings: Using Words to Share How You Feel

You've learned to notice influences on your choices. Next, let's look at a skill that helps with almost every part of health: communicating clearly. Students explored feelings in Chapter 3 — feelings are the emotions we experience, like happy, sad, worried, or excited. Communicating feelings means using words, and sometimes gestures or pictures, to tell another person how you feel inside.

Communicating feelings matters because other people cannot see what's happening inside you. A trusted adult or friend can only help once they know how you feel. Saying "I feel worried about the spelling test" or "I feel happy that you shared your crayons with me" gives other people the information they need to respond in a caring way.

Here are simple sentence starters a Grade 1 student can use to communicate feelings:

• "I feel _ because ___."
• "Right now I am feeling _____."
• "That made me feel _____."

Communicating Needs: Using Words to Ask for What You Need

Closely related to communicating feelings is communicating needs — using words to tell another person what you need, such as help, rest, food, or space. A need is different from a feeling: a feeling is how you feel inside, while a need is something that would help you feel better or stay healthy.

For example, a student who feels tired (a feeling) might communicate the need by saying, "I need to rest for a few minutes" (a need). A student who feels hungry might say, "I need a snack." Communicating needs clearly — instead of just acting upset or frustrated — helps other people understand exactly how to help.

Here is how feelings and needs work together, using a few common Grade 1 examples:

Situation	Feeling	Communicating the Need
Missed recess because of rain	Disappointed	"I need to move my body — can we do an indoor activity?"
Loud, crowded classroom	Overwhelmed	"I need a quiet moment, please."
Difficult math problem	Frustrated	"I need help with this problem."
Left out of a game	Sad	"I need a friend to play with."

Diagram: Feelings and Needs Communication Coach

Feelings and Needs Communication Coach MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: feelings-and-needs-communication-coach
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Apply (L3) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: demonstrate, practice, apply

Learning objective: Students demonstrate communicating thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs in healthy ways by building a complete sentence from a picture prompt, matching the Grade 1 benchmark on communicating thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs in healthy ways.

Canvas layout: - Left area (450px): One picture-prompt scene at a time (e.g., a child looking left out at recess) - Right area (150px): Word-bank buttons for feelings and needs, plus a sentence-building strip and an infobox

Visual elements: - 6 scenes showing a Grade 1 student in a common school or home situation (rained-out recess, loud classroom, hard homework problem, left out of a game, tired after lunch, excited about a good grade) - A sentence strip at the bottom that fills in as the student taps word-bank buttons: "I feel ___ because . I need ." - Word-bank buttons grouped by feeling words (happy, sad, tired, frustrated, worried, excited) and need words (help, rest, a friend, quiet, a snack, a turn)

Interactive controls: - Click-to-select: student taps a feeling word and a need word to complete the sentence strip - Button: "Try Saying It" (pairs with the text-to-speech skill to read the finished sentence aloud in a warm, encouraging voice) - Button: "Next Scene" - Button: "Reset"

Default parameters: - First scene: rained-out recess, to model a low-stakes, relatable example

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the picture prompt with an empty sentence strip Stage 2: Show the sentence strip fill in as each word is selected Stage 3: Reveal a caption once the sentence is complete: "Great! You just told someone exactly how you feel and what you need."

Behavior: - Multiple feeling-and-need combinations are accepted as correct for each scene, since more than one honest answer can fit a situation - Completed sentence appears in a speech bubble above the character in the scene

Instructional Rationale: This is an Apply-level (demonstrate/practice) objective, so the MicroSim has students actively construct their own feeling-and-need sentences from a word bank rather than only reading examples, directly rehearsing the healthy-communication skill the benchmark calls for.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep all scenes warm and everyday; avoid any scenario resembling the personal-safety content from Chapter 6, since this MicroSim focuses on everyday emotional and physical needs, not unsafe situations.

You now know two important communication skills: sharing feelings and sharing needs. Sometimes, though, sharing a feeling or a need isn't quite enough on its own — sometimes what's needed is help from another person. Let's look at that next.

Seeking Help: Reaching Out When You Need Support

Seeking help means reaching out to another person — often a trusted adult — when you need support with a problem, a task, or a feeling. Students already practiced asking a trusted adult in Chapter 6 in the context of safety. Seeking help is the broader skill underneath that: knowing that it is always okay, and often the smart choice, to ask for support rather than struggling alone.

Seeking help can happen for all kinds of reasons — not just emergencies. A student might seek help to open a stubborn juice box, to understand a confusing homework question, to find a bandage for a scraped knee, or to talk through a disagreement with a friend. There is no situation too small to ask for help with, and there is no situation so big that asking for help is the wrong choice.

Helpful Tip

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness — it's a smart, healthy habit. The people who care about you want to know when you need support.

Recognizing Need For Help: Noticing When It's Time to Ask

Before a student can seek help, they need a skill that comes first: recognizing need for help, which means noticing the signs that a situation calls for support from someone else. This might mean noticing that a task feels too hard to finish alone, that a feeling is too big to handle by yourself, or that a friend seems to be struggling and could use a helper too.

Recognizing the need for help is like the "uh-oh feeling" students learned about in Chapter 6, but broader: it's the moment of noticing "I can't quite do this by myself" or "This doesn't feel right," and understanding that the very next step is to seek help.

Here are common signs that it's time to ask for help:

1. A task keeps feeling too hard, even after trying more than once.
2. A feeling is very big — like very sad, very worried, or very angry — and it isn't going away.
3. Something feels unsafe, confusing, or wrong.
4. A friend or classmate seems to need support too.

Diagram: Time to Ask? Recognizing the Signs

Time to Ask? Recognizing the Signs Infographic

Type: infographic sim-id: time-to-ask-recognizing-the-signs
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: recognize, describe, explain

Learning objective: Students recognize when help is needed and who can support a health-related decision by exploring everyday scenes and identifying the signal that it's time to seek help.

Purpose: Help students connect a feeling or situation to the recognition that help is needed, reinforcing the Grade 1 benchmark on recognizing when help is needed and who can support a decision

Layout: A single friendly scene with four clickable characters, each showing a different situation (a student stuck on a shoe tying, a student with a very big worried feeling before a test, a student who can't reach a high shelf, a student who notices a friend sitting alone and looking sad)

Interactive elements: - Click each character to reveal a caption naming the sign ("This task feels too hard alone," "This feeling is very big," "I can't do this safely by myself," "My friend might need help too") and a matching helper suggestion (family member, teacher, school staff, trusted friend) - A summary panel lists all four signs after all characters have been clicked

Visual style: Warm, everyday classroom and home scenes in flat illustration style; no distressing imagery, just relatable Grade 1 moments Color scheme: Soft, warm palette consistent with the rest of the book

Implementation: p5.js with clickable character hotspots mapped to caption reveals; a simple counter tracks how many of the four signs have been explored

Health Decision: Choosing an Action That Supports Your Wellbeing

All the skills covered so far — noticing influences, communicating feelings and needs, recognizing when to ask for help, and seeking that help — come together in one important idea: the health decision. A health decision is a choice a person makes that affects their health or safety, such as choosing a snack, deciding how to spend free time, or deciding whether to tell a trusted adult about a problem.

Some health decisions are easy and can be made alone, like choosing water instead of soda. Other health decisions are harder and benefit from asking a trusted adult for support — especially when a positive or negative influence is involved, or when the student isn't sure what to do.

Let's connect this to something students already know: a positive influence made a health decision easier, while a negative influence made it harder. A student who recognizes a negative influence (like a friend daring them to skip handwashing) can use that recognition to make a healthier decision (washing their hands anyway, and telling a trusted adult if the dare continues).

Diagram: Making a Healthy Choice Decision Path

Making a Healthy Choice Decision Path MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: making-a-healthy-choice-decision-path
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain, describe, summarize

Learning objective: Students explain the steps of making a health decision — noticing the influence, thinking about the choice, and asking for help if needed — using a step-through walkthrough with a concrete, relatable scenario.

Canvas layout: - Left area (450px): One decision-path scene per step, shown one at a time - Right area (150px): "Next Step" and "Previous Step" buttons, a step counter ("Step 2 of 4"), and an infobox

Visual elements: - Step 1: A student is offered a sugary snack by a friend at lunch (the influence) - Step 2: A thought bubble shows the student asking, "Is this a positive or negative influence on my choice right now?" - Step 3: A thought bubble shows the student deciding, "I can choose the fruit instead," or "I'm not sure — I could ask a trusted adult." - Step 4: The student makes the healthy choice and feels proud

Interactive controls: - Button: "Next Step" (advances to the next scene) - Button: "Previous Step" (returns to the prior scene) - Step counter always visible

Default parameters: - Starts at Step 1 (the influence is introduced)

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the snack offer and caption: "A friend offers you a sugary snack every day at lunch." Stage 2: Show the thinking step and caption: "Notice the influence — is it helping or making the choice harder?" Stage 3: Show the decision step and caption: "Decide what to do, or ask a trusted adult if you're not sure." Stage 4: Show the outcome and caption: "You made a health decision that supports your body."

Behavior: - Each click of "Next Step" reveals the next scene and caption; "Previous Step" allows review - A closing caption after Step 4 reads: "Every health decision follows this same path: notice the influence, think it through, ask for help if you need it, then choose."

Instructional Rationale: This is an Understand-level (explain/describe) objective, so the MicroSim uses a step-through walkthrough with a concrete scenario rather than continuous animation, letting students trace the full decision path in order and connect it back to the influence and help-seeking concepts already taught in this chapter.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep the scenario everyday and low-stakes (food choice), since Grade 1 health decisions should stay concrete and relatable rather than abstract.

Big Idea

A health decision is a choice that affects your health or safety. Notice the influence, think it through, and remember — asking a trusted adult for help is always part of making a good choice.

Tracking Health Behaviors: Watching Your Healthy Habits Over Time

Making one good health decision is a great start, but health also grows from tracking health behaviors — watching and recording healthy practices over time, like brushing teeth, being active, or eating a variety of foods. Tracking connects directly to personal care practice and physical activity from Chapter 5: those are the habits, and tracking is how a student notices whether the habits are actually happening regularly.

Tracking doesn't need to be complicated. A Grade 1 student might use a simple chart with a box to check off each day they brush their teeth, drink water, or play actively outside. Seeing the checked boxes build up over a week helps a student feel proud of their healthy habits and notice patterns, like which days are harder to be active.

Here are simple ways a Grade 1 student can track health behaviors:

• A weekly chart with a box to check for each healthy habit completed
• Stickers placed on a calendar for each day a habit happens
• A short conversation with a family member each night about the day's healthy choices

Diagram: My Healthy Habits Tracker

My Healthy Habits Tracker MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: my-healthy-habits-tracker
Library: Chart.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Apply (L3) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: demonstrate, practice, track

Learning objective: Students demonstrate and track practices and behaviors that support health and wellbeing by checking off a simple weekly habit tracker and watching a bar chart grow, matching the Grade 1 benchmark on demonstrating and tracking health-supporting practices.

Canvas layout: - Left area (450px): A 7-day-by-4-habit checklist grid (rows: "Brushed Teeth," "Drank Water," "Active Play," "Ate a Fruit or Vegetable"; columns: Monday through Sunday) - Right area (150px): A live-updating bar chart showing total check marks per habit, plus an infobox

Visual elements: - Checklist grid with clickable checkboxes for each day/habit cell - A bar chart with one bar per habit, height matching how many days that habit was checked this week - A friendly weekly total counter ("You tracked 18 healthy habits this week!")

Interactive controls: - Click-to-toggle: student clicks a checkbox to mark a habit complete for a day - Button: "New Week" (clears the grid to start tracking again) - Hover on any bar to see the exact count and which days were checked

Default parameters: - All checkboxes start unchecked - Chart updates immediately as boxes are checked

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the empty checklist grid and a bar chart with all bars at zero Stage 2: Show a bar grow immediately each time a checkbox is clicked Stage 3: Show the weekly total counter update with each new check mark

Behavior: - Every checkbox click immediately updates the corresponding bar in the chart, giving instant visible feedback - Hovering a bar shows a tooltip with the exact number of days checked, reinforcing that hovering reveals more detail

Instructional Rationale: This is an Apply-level (demonstrate/track) objective, so the MicroSim has students actively practice the real skill of tracking — checking boxes and watching a chart respond — rather than only reading about the idea of tracking, which directly rehearses the benchmark's call for demonstration.

Implementation notes: Use Chart.js for the live bar chart paired with a simple HTML/CSS checklist grid. Teacher can use this as a model before students start a paper or take-home version of the same weekly tracker.

Asking For Help With Choices: Bringing It All Together

The final concept in this chapter — and in the whole Grade 1 book — is asking for help with choices: reaching out to a trusted adult or another trusted person specifically to help think through a health decision. This brings together everything from this chapter: recognizing when help is needed, and using that recognition to make a better health decision.

Asking for help with a choice does not mean someone else makes the decision instead of the student. It means the student shares the situation, listens to ideas, and then makes a more informed choice. For example, a student unsure whether a snack is a healthy choice might ask, "Can you help me decide what to eat before my game?" A trusted adult can offer information the student didn't have, making the final decision easier and healthier.

Here are simple phrases a Grade 1 student can use to ask for help with a choice:

1. "I'm not sure what to do — can you help me think about it?"
2. "Can you help me decide between these two things?"
3. "What would you do if you were me?"

You Can Do This

Asking for help with a hard choice can feel a little scary at first — that's okay. The more you practice asking, the easier and more natural it becomes, and you'll always have people ready to help you think it through.

Diagram: Ask for Help With a Choice — Practice Scenarios

Ask for Help With a Choice — Practice Scenarios MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: ask-for-help-with-a-choice-practice-scenarios
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Apply (L3) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: demonstrate, practice, apply

Learning objective: Students demonstrate asking for help from others in making safe, health-promoting choices by selecting an appropriate help-seeking phrase in response to everyday decision scenarios, matching the Grade 1 benchmark on ways to ask for help in making safe, health-promoting choices.

Canvas layout: - Left area (450px): One decision scenario at a time (e.g., "You're not sure if you should play outside or rest because you feel a little sick.") - Right area (150px): Three phrase-choice buttons and an infobox

Visual elements: - 6 scenario cards covering food, activity, rest, and hygiene decisions - Three phrase-choice buttons per scenario, drawn from the sentence starters taught in this section

Interactive controls: - Click-to-select: student selects the phrase they would use to ask for help - Button: "Try Saying It" (pairs with the text-to-speech skill to play the chosen phrase aloud) - Button: "Next Scenario" - Button: "Reset"

Default parameters: - First scenario: deciding between playing outside and resting when feeling a little tired, a low-stakes and relatable example

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the scenario and three phrase choices, no feedback yet Stage 2: After a choice is selected, show a caption affirming that asking for help was the right move Stage 3: Reveal a closing caption: "Asking for help with a choice means you get to think it through with someone who cares about you."

Behavior: - All three phrase choices are treated as correct, since the goal is building the habit of asking, not testing for one exact phrase - Every scenario ends with the same reinforcing message about the value of asking for help

Instructional Rationale: This is an Apply-level (demonstrate/practice) objective, so the MicroSim has students rehearse real help-seeking language across several everyday decisions, directly matching the benchmark's call for demonstrating ways to ask for help with health-promoting choices.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep every scenario everyday and low-stakes, reinforcing that asking for help is for big and small choices alike.

Wrap-Up for Teachers

This chapter, and the Grade 1 book, close by connecting nine ideas into one habit of mind: notice the influence, communicate the feeling or need, recognize when help is needed, seek that help, and use it to make and track a healthy decision. By the end of this chapter, most Grade 1 students should be able to tell a positive influence from a negative one, use a simple sentence to communicate a feeling or need, name a sign that it's time to ask for help, and describe at least one way to track a healthy habit. These are lifelong skills — please continue to revisit them in short check-ins throughout Grade 1 and beyond, connecting them back to the food, feelings, friendship, healthy habits, and safety topics from earlier chapters.

You Finished the Whole Book!

Congratulations, friend! You made it through the whole Grade 1 book — from food and feelings to friendship, healthy habits, safety, and now getting help and making good choices. You've built so many healthy habits this year. Healthy choices, happy you!

Quick Check for Read-Aloud Time — Click to expand

Ask the class: "If you're not sure whether a choice is healthy, what can you do?" Then reveal: You can ask a trusted adult to help you think it through — asking for help is always a smart, healthy choice.