3rd Grade Health Lesson Plans

The Year Students Learn to Make Health Choices for Themselves

Third grade is the year students learn to make health choices for themselves — and to notice what shapes them. They describe examples of physical, social, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of health, distinguish between safe and unsafe situations, people, and events, and describe ways to prevent common childhood injuries and health problems. They describe how family and culture influence health behaviors, explain how peers influence health practices and behaviors, and analyze how media, social media, and technology influence health behaviors. They use functional health literacy skills to access valid health information, identify trusted adults and community resources for health information, and identify healthy and unhealthy messages in media. They demonstrate effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills, demonstrate refusal skills to avoid or reduce health risks, and demonstrate healthy ways to manage and resolve conflict. They identify procedural steps in decision making, predict the potential consequences of each option, and reflect on the outcomes of an effective health decision. They set a realistic personal health goal, develop a plan for achieving a personal health goal, and identify potential barriers to achieving a personal health goal. They explain the importance of making health practices into habits. And they demonstrate how to persuade others to make healthy choices. Third grade health asks students to do all of that on purpose: to notice what shapes their choices, to decide and plan for themselves, and to speak up for healthy choices around them.

That’s what makes it hard to plan. You can’t explain “refusal skills” to an eight-year-old. You have to build a moment where they show themselves — a role-play where a student practices saying no to a risky situation, a sort where the class decides which media messages are helpful and which are misleading, a list of the trusted adults they would ask a health question — and then help students say what they noticed and why it matters. Each lesson needs a routine that works with the time and space you have, something students can practice and repeat, a way to show understanding for children still growing as writers, and enough structure that a conversation about real health choices stays safe and stays with it. That’s a long Sunday.

Twenty-three third grade health lessons are listed below, ready to open and read in full.

What Third Grade Health Actually Asks of You

Third grade health on the platform runs on the National Health Education Standards — forty-nine third grade codes, HE.3.1.1 through HE.3.8.2 — and a full year has to reach all of them:

• HE.3.1.1 — describe examples of physical, social, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of health.
• HE.3.1.2 — describe benefits of practicing health-promoting behaviors.
• HE.3.1.3 — analyze potential consequences of practicing unhealthy behaviors.
• HE.3.1.4 — distinguish between safe and unsafe situations, people, and events.
• HE.3.1.5 — describe practices and behaviors that prevent or reduce health risks.
• HE.3.1.6 — explain ways to engage in healthy practices and behaviors.
• HE.3.1.7 — describe ways to prevent common childhood injuries and health problems.
• HE.3.2.1 — describe how family and culture influence health behaviors.
• HE.3.2.2 — explain how peers influence health practices and behaviors.
• HE.3.2.3 — describe how schools and neighborhoods influence health behaviors.
• HE.3.2.4 — analyze how media, social media, and technology influence health behaviors.
• HE.3.2.5 — identify positive internal and external influences on personal health.
• HE.3.2.6 — identify negative internal and external influences on personal health.
• HE.3.3.1 — use functional health literacy skills to access valid health information.
• HE.3.3.2 — access health information from print or electronic materials.
• HE.3.3.3 — identify trusted adults and community resources for health information.
• HE.3.3.4 — demonstrate interactive health literacy by talking with trusted adults.
• HE.3.3.5 — read and interpret health information from valid sources.
• HE.3.3.6 — understand visual and numerical representations in health materials.
• HE.3.3.7 — write about health-related products that support healthy decisions.
• HE.3.3.8 — identify healthy and unhealthy messages in media.
• HE.3.4.1 — explain how effective communication benefits personal health.
• HE.3.4.2 — demonstrate effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills.
• HE.3.4.3 — demonstrate how to communicate needs, wants, and feelings in healthy ways.
• HE.3.4.4 — demonstrate how to ask for help from trusted adults.
• HE.3.4.5 — demonstrate refusal skills to avoid or reduce health risks.
• HE.3.4.6 — demonstrate how to communicate kindness, empathy, and care.
• HE.3.4.7 — demonstrate ways to show respect for others consent.
• HE.3.4.8 — demonstrate collaboration and negotiation skills.
• HE.3.4.9 — demonstrate healthy ways to manage and resolve conflict.
• HE.3.5.1 — identify procedural steps in decision making.
• HE.3.5.2 — assess when help is needed to make a health decision.
• HE.3.5.3 — explain how family, peers, trusted adults, and media affect health decisions.
• HE.3.5.4 — identify multiple options when making a health-related decision.
• HE.3.5.5 — predict the potential consequences of each option.
• HE.3.5.6 — choose a health-promoting option that aligns with personal values.
• HE.3.5.7 — reflect on the outcomes of an effective health decision.
• HE.3.6.1 — set a realistic personal health goal.
• HE.3.6.2 — explain the health benefits of reaching a personal health goal.
• HE.3.6.3 — develop a plan for achieving a personal health goal.
• HE.3.6.4 — describe people and resources that can help achieve a health goal.
• HE.3.6.5 — identify potential barriers to achieving a personal health goal.
• HE.3.6.6 — implement strategies toward achieving a health goal.
• HE.3.6.7 — explain how effort and determination help achieve health goals.
• HE.3.7.1 — demonstrate observable health and safety practices.
• HE.3.7.2 — reflect on ability to perform health and safety practices.
• HE.3.7.3 — explain the importance of making health practices into habits.
• HE.3.8.1 — demonstrate how to persuade others to make healthy choices.
• HE.3.8.2 — demonstrate how to persuade others to avoid unhealthy behaviors.

The National Health Education Standards are written for grades 3–5 together. TeacherAICenter broke them into grade-specific correlations, so a 3rd grade Health lesson tracks 3rd grade expectations — not a band that sort of applies.

The forty-nine fall into eight groups, and the file names them: Functional Health Knowledge (seven codes), Analyze Influences (six), Access Valid Information (Health Literacy) (eight), Interpersonal Communication (nine), Decision Making (seven), Goal Setting (seven), Health & Safety Practices (three), and Advocacy (two). Each is a big idea for an eight-year-old: the dimensions of health, healthy practices, and preventing injuries; the family, culture, peers, schools, neighborhoods, and media that influence health behaviors; finding, reading, and interpreting health information and identifying healthy and unhealthy messages; communicating needs, asking for help, refusing, showing kindness and respect for consent, and resolving conflict; the steps of a health decision; setting, planning, and working toward a personal health goal; turning health practices into habits; and persuading others to make healthy choices. Knowing which codes a lesson reaches — and noticing in spring that refusal skills or media messages never came up — is real work. It’s the part of planning that has nothing to do with the conversation itself and everything to do with accounting.

Every Lesson Aligned, Without the Cross-Referencing

TeacherAICenter was built so that the standards accounting happens on its own. The platform has 1,706 national K-5 standards loaded across eight frameworks and ten subjects. Health runs on the National Health Education Standards’ forty-nine third grade codes, so when you select third grade and Health Education, the standards that appear are those codes — HE.3.1.1 through HE.3.8.2 — not a generic “elementary health” list. You describe the lesson you want in your own words. The platform’s assistive intelligence (AI) correlates it to the right third grade standards, writes measurable objectives tied to them, and builds the lesson around them. You review the standards it chose, deselect anything you’ve already covered, add anything it missed. The teacher’s choice is always the last word.

The point isn’t that the platform decides what your students need. It’s that the time you’d spend matching an activity to a standard happens in the background, so the time goes back to the rest of teaching.

What a Third Grade Health Lesson Looks Like

Say you’re teaching goal setting. You open the Lesson Builder, choose third grade and Health Education, set the lesson length, and type something like: “I want them drawing a blueprint for one personal health goal, naming the people and resources who can help, and spotting what might get in the way and how they’ll get past it.” You list what’s in your room: chart paper, construction paper, crayons and colored pencils, glue sticks, and scissors.

What comes back is a complete lesson. It’s aligned to third grade health standards like HE.3.6.4 and HE.3.6.5, with four to six measurable objectives written against them. It’s paced into an opening, a main activity, and a closing. The activities are built from the supplies you named — a class chart of the people and resources who can help, written on chart paper, a goal blueprint each student builds from construction paper, crayons, and glue, and a closing where students name one barrier they predict and the strategy they’ll use to get past it — not a shopping list of things you’d have to go buy. It includes differentiation for three levels of learner and support for English learners, a formative assessment that measures the objectives the lesson actually teaches, and a printable exit ticket with an answer key. Then it saves to your library, exports to Google Drive, and registers its standards to your coverage Tracker.

That’s the shape of it: you bring the skill and the supplies; the standards alignment, the objectives, the differentiation, and the assessment get done with you, in minutes instead of an evening.

Health With a Partner Subject in Every Lesson

Third grade health asks students to analyze influences, to make and reflect on health decisions, to work toward personal health goals, and to persuade others to make healthy choices, so the lessons in this curriculum pair health with the subjects that do each job best. Every third grade health lesson on the platform is a fusion lesson with at least one partner subject. Thirteen carry ELA, eight carry PE, five carry social-emotional learning, five carry social studies, four carry technology, and two carry music. Health supplies the knowledge and the skills; ELA brings language in twelve and writing in one, PE carries health into leaps and jumps, dance steps, throwing and catching, dribbling, kicking, and striking, chasing strategies, working cooperatively with rules and etiquette, and locomotor skills in eight, social-emotional learning brings in organizational skills, taking the perspective of others, empathy, multiple solutions, the impact of decisions, and ethical reasoning in five, social studies brings cultural groups, communities changing over time, government, citizens’ rights and responsibilities, jobs, saving and spending, and supply and demand in five, technology brings a design process, prototypes, data, and project teams in four, and music brings rehearsing, performing, and evaluating ensemble performances in two. A single lesson on this platform can span up to three subjects and up to two grade levels at once, with the standards from each subject tracked back to their own bucket. That’s how a fusion lesson does the work of two or three single-subject lessons in the time of one — and it’s how a teacher running a 3/4 combination class can teach one shared lesson that earns coverage for both grades.

Third Grade Health Lessons You Can Open Right Now

These are the third grade lessons in the curriculum that carry health standards. They’re grouped the way the curriculum itself is built — into blocks, each one a stretch of the year with its own question to answer. Every lesson is a fusion lesson with at least one partner subject. Thirteen also teach ELA, eight teach PE, five teach social-emotional learning, five teach social studies, four teach technology, and two teach music. Open any of them and read the whole plan.

Community Investigators — healthy choices, influences on decisions, accessing valid information, media literacy, and safety awareness

• Community Showcase: Past and Present — Social Studies, Reading/ELA, Health Education
• Citizenship Council Meeting — Social Studies, Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Smart Choices Circle: Money, Health, and Spelling Connections — Social Studies, Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Healthy Choices All Around Me — Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Health Facts or Fiction: Smart Information Seekers — Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Community Helpers Safety Shield — Social Studies, Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Health Help Network Builder — Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Health Chart Decoders: Reading Medical Numbers and Words — Health Education, Reading/ELA
• Media Message Makers: Spotting Healthy and Unhealthy Clues — Health Education, Reading/ELA

Healthy Choices Champions — communication skills, refusal skills, and goal setting

• Communication Power Station — Health Education, Physical Education, Reading/ELA
• Movement Feelings Circle: Express and Connect — Health Education, Physical Education, Reading/ELA
• Super Skills Stadium: Building Safe Choices and Throwing Power — Physical Education, Health Education
• Teamwork Sports Station Challenge — Health Education, Physical Education
• Healthy Choices Tag Challenge — Health Education, Physical Education
• Playground Champions Health Goal Setting — Health Education, Physical Education, Reading/ELA

Voice Builders — health goals, action planning, injury prevention, and musical health advocacy

• Goal-Setting Design Lab — Technology, Social-Emotional Learning, Health Education
• Health Goal Blueprint Workshop — Technology, Health Education, Social-Emotional Learning
• Health Goal Action Plan Dashboard — Technology, Health Education, Social-Emotional Learning
• Community Safety Squad — Technology, Health Education, Physical Education
• Healthy Habits Musical Performance Workshop — Health Education, Social-Emotional Learning, Music
• Healthy Choices Music Showcase — Health Education, Social-Emotional Learning, Music
• Smart Choices Movement Lab — Health Education, Physical Education
• Market Day Health Store — Social Studies, Health Education, Reading/ELA

What’s Included With Every Lesson

A third grade health lesson from TeacherAICenter isn’t a worksheet. Every one arrives as a complete teaching package: a standards-aligned plan with pacing, measurable learning objectives, activities built from supplies you already have, differentiation for struggling and advanced learners, English-learner support, a formative assessment aligned to the objectives, a printable exit ticket with an answer key, a Google Drive export, a permanent spot in your personal library, and automatic entry into your standards coverage Tracker. Generated, ready to teach.

What This Isn’t

You’ve likely pieced together third grade health from several places already. Teachers Pay Teachers carries a wide range of health units and activities, and some are very good — but each one is bought separately, written for another teacher’s schedule, and may assume materials you don’t have. Health curriculum guides lay out a sequence, but a sequence isn’t tomorrow’s lesson built for your room. Discussion cards and posters bring the topic, along with the ongoing job of turning each one into something aligned to what your students need next.

TeacherAICenter isn’t a health program, a textbook, or a marketplace of other people’s lessons. It builds the lesson to your grade, your standards, and your supplies, every time you ask. The difference is whether you’re adapting something close enough, or generating exactly what your room needs.

A Starting Point, Not a Ceiling

A generated lesson isn’t meant to be the final word — it’s meant to be the foundation that saves you the first two hours. You edit it. You regenerate a section that didn’t land. You add a second round of practice when the first one comes back shaky. Everything you build stays in your library, alive, ready to be reshaped for the next class. The platform does the heavy lifting so the professional judgment — the part that’s actually yours — is where your time goes.

Questions Teachers Ask

What standards are the lessons aligned to?

Third grade health on the platform is built on the National Health Education Standards — forty-nine third grade codes in eight groups: Functional Health Knowledge (seven), Analyze Influences (six), Access Valid Information (Health Literacy) (eight), Interpersonal Communication (nine), Decision Making (seven), Goal Setting (seven), Health & Safety Practices (three), and Advocacy (two). They reach from describing examples of physical, social, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of health and describing how family and culture influence health behaviors to demonstrating refusal skills, choosing a health-promoting option that aligns with personal values, setting a realistic personal health goal, and persuading others to make healthy choices. Your state may write its own health standards, so it’s worth setting the forty-nine beside your state’s third grade list.

Can I get a lesson for a specific standard, like HE.3.4.5 refusal skills or HE.3.3.8 media messages?

Yes. You can build toward whichever standard you’re teaching next — a role-play where students demonstrate refusal skills to avoid or reduce health risks for HE.3.4.5, a close look at advertisements that identifies healthy and unhealthy messages in media for HE.3.3.8. You describe the topic; the platform aligns it to the right code and builds the lesson around it.

Does this replace my health program?

No. It builds the lesson you’re teaching next, aligned to the third grade standards you choose — a lesson on the procedural steps in decision making, a look at how peers influence health practices and behaviors, a first realistic personal health goal with a plan for achieving it. The twenty-three lessons on this page are the third grade health lessons in the curriculum, and together they carry all forty-nine third grade health codes; the Lesson Builder can build as many more as your year needs, toward any of them, alongside whatever program your school uses.

Why do these health lessons also teach ELA, PE, social-emotional learning, social studies, technology, or music?

Because third grade health is learned by practicing it and by putting it into words and movement — ELA brings language into twelve of the lessons and writing into one, PE puts health into movement in eight, social-emotional learning carries five into organizational skills, taking the perspective of others, empathy, multiple solutions, the impact of decisions, and ethical reasoning, social studies brings cultural groups, communities changing over time, government, citizens’ rights and responsibilities, jobs, saving and spending, and supply and demand into five, technology brings a design process, prototypes, data, and project teams into four, and music brings rehearsing, performing, and evaluating ensemble performances into two. Every third grade health lesson in the curriculum is a fusion lesson, and the standards from each partner subject are tracked in their own bucket, separate from health. You get credit for each subject taught.

Do I need special materials?

Lessons are built around your Supply Closet — the supplies you tell the platform you have — and they use those first. Every supply list marks the difference: green for what’s in your closet, yellow for recommended items outside it. Twelve of the twenty-three lessons here recommend nothing yellow. Seven of the eleven that do are fused with PE. Four of those recommend common equipment — balls, cones or markers, bean bags, or paddles or short bats. The other three recommend a music player or speaker on two, masking tape on two, and a timer or stopwatch on one. The last four are fused with ELA, and they recommend reading materials: student dictionaries and index cards, sample health texts, sample nutrition labels with a children’s dictionary or health glossary, and sample health product advertisements. Add them to your Supply Closet and the Builder works from them.

Can I edit the lessons after they’re generated?

Yes. Every lesson is yours to edit, regenerate, or extend, and it exports to Google Drive if you’d rather work there. The generated version is a starting point, not a fixed product.

Does it track which standards I’ve covered?

Yes. Every lesson you save registers its standards to your coverage Tracker automatically, so at any point in the year you can see which third grade health standards you’ve covered and which are still open.

Is it only third grade health, or other grades and subjects too?

The platform covers all of K-5 across ten subjects — math, ELA, science, social studies, health, PE, visual arts, music, technology, and social-emotional learning. Third grade health is one corner of it.

How much does it cost?

One subscription covers everything the platform does — the full curriculum and unlimited lesson building across all grades and subjects, with no add-ons. Your first five lessons are free, with no account required, so you can see a third grade health lesson before you decide.

See Your Next Third Grade Health Lesson

The fastest way to know whether this fits your classroom is to build one lesson and look at it. Try the Lesson Builder — choose third grade and Health Education, describe the lesson you’re planning next in your own words, and see the standards-aligned lesson it builds from the supplies you already have. Your first five lessons are free.