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Who Shapes My Health Choices?

Run the Who Shapes My Health Choices? MicroSim Fullscreen

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About this MicroSim

Who Shapes My Health Choices? is an interactive MicroSim for this health-education textbook.

Students classify everyday scenarios into the correct source of influence (family, friends, school, community, media, culture) and explain whether each example nudges a health behavior in a helpful or unhelpful direction.

Use the controls in the panel below the drawing to interact with the model, then talk through what changed and why. The MicroSim is width-responsive and can be embedded in any course page with the iframe shown above.

Bloom's Taxonomy level: Understand (L2) — classify, exemplify, explain

Lesson Plan

Audience

This MicroSim is designed for Grade 3. For the K-3 bands the teacher typically drives the activity on a shared screen; older students can explore the MicroSim independently.

Learning Objective

Students classify everyday scenarios into the correct source of influence (family, friends, school, community, media, culture) and explain whether each example nudges a health behavior in a helpful or unhelpful direction.

This activity targets Bloom's Understand (L2) (classify, exemplify, explain).

Suggested Use (about 10 minutes)

  1. Warm up (2 min). Ask students what they already know about the topic and let one volunteer describe what they see on the screen.
  2. Model it (3 min). Demonstrate the interaction once, thinking aloud so students hear the reasoning behind each choice.
  3. Guided practice (3 min). Invite students to try the interaction and to predict what will happen before they act.
  4. Discuss (2 min). Ask why the result came out the way it did, connecting the on-screen result back to the learning objective above.

Check for Understanding

Have each student (or pair) explain their result in one sentence, using the vocabulary from this chapter. Look for reasoning that matches the Understand-level objective rather than a lucky guess.

Specification

The full specification below was extracted from Chapter 1: Foundations Of Health.

Type: infographic
**sim-id:** health-influence-explorer<br/>
**Library:** p5.js<br/>
**Status:** Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: classify, exemplify, explain

Learning objective: Students classify everyday scenarios into the correct source of influence (family, friends, school, community, media, culture) and explain whether each example nudges a health behavior in a helpful or unhelpful direction.

Purpose: Help students see that health choices come from many outside sources, and that noticing the source is the first step toward evaluating whether to follow it.

Layout: A central child character surrounded by six labeled "influence bubbles" arranged in a ring: Family, Friends, School, Community, Media, Culture.

Interactive elements:
- Click a bubble: an infobox opens with a short definition and two example scenario cards for that influence
- Each scenario card has a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon the student can pick, revealing a one-sentence explanation of why the example is helpful or unhelpful for health
- "Show Another Example" button cycles a fresh scenario into the open bubble
- A running tally at the bottom shows how many helpful vs. unhelpful examples the student has reviewed

Visual style: Flat, friendly illustration with the child character in the center and soft-colored bubbles radiating outward; diverse families and community settings represented.

Color scheme: Each influence bubble has its own soft color (family: warm yellow, friends: light green, school: blue, community: purple, media: orange, culture: teal) used consistently with later chapters.

Responsive behavior: Ring of bubbles collapses into a scrollable row on narrow screens; all bubbles remain tappable.

Implementation: p5.js with an object array of influence data (name, color, definition, scenario list) driving click-to-reveal infoboxes.

References