High School Block:
Personal Wellness 9
In Personal Wellness, learners examine their own personal health and how their choices and habits impact
personal wellness and the community. They learn the importance of communication and boundary setting in
developing healthy relationships both with peers and romantically. Learners examine social, emotional, and
cognitive changes associated with adolescence and how those choices impact relationships, personal safety, and
mental health. Developing strategies for conflict resolution, facing challenges, and setting personal boundaries
enables learners to build positive mental fitness competencies. In Grade 9, learners explore ways to apply healthy
decision-making strategies within their life and towards future goals.
For Educators:
CONTEXTS AND CONCEPTS
SELF-CARE AND WELL-BEING
WELLNESS
- Healthy interactions
- Use and misuse of substances, food, and screen time
- Boundaries
MENTAL FITNESS
- Positive mindset
- Building resiliency
- Suicide prevention
- Financial decision-making
WHO YOU ARE MATTERS
HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
- Identities and relationships
- Decision-making around sexual activity
- Healthy self-image
- Influences of media
RELATIONSHIPS
- Healthy interpersonal and sexual relationships
- Consent
- Bullying and conflict
- Anti-discrimination and responsibilities
PERSONAL CONNECTIONS
CAREER-CONNECTED LEARNING
- Personal interests, skills, and competencies
- Equitable career access
- Career pathways and career experiences
Strand: Wellness
Big Idea: Healthy Lifestyle
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate knowledge of health habits that have a positive impact on self.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, ICE, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Conduct an audit of personal health habits
- Develop a personal plan for healthy living
- Assess the effectiveness of various health habits to prevent the spread of communicable diseases
- List community resources that support healthy lifestyles
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate knowledge of health habits that have a positive impact on community well-being.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, ICE, SASM, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Discuss the influence of individuals on community well-being
- Evaluate factors that contribute to the overall well-being of a community
- Design solutions that respond to a community wellness issue
Big Idea: Helpful and Harmful Choices
Skill Descriptor: Apply strategies that have a positive impact on food, screen time, and substance use/misuse.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Analyze how food, screen time, and substances may affect an individual’s health (e.g., mental, social, emotional, and physical including brain development)
- Analyze health, interpersonal, and legal concerns about the use and abuse of legal and illegal substances
- Discuss how the use or misuse of food, screen time, and substances is personal and looks different for every individual
- List resources and supports associated with the prevention of substance misuse
Big Idea: Personal Safety
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate competency in healthy interactions with media and technology.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SASM, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Develop criteria for effective digital citizenship
- Identify laws about sharing or securing sexually explicit images
- Assess strategies to keep self and others safe online (e.g., luring, protecting personal information, identifying misinformation and disinformation, reporting unsafe behaviours/conditions, etc.)
- Analyze the accuracy and purposes of online information and messages
- Reflect on and share personal positive digital practices and behaviours
Strand: Human Growth and Development
Big Idea: Personal Growth
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate care, sensitivity, and respect for identities and for changes that occur during adolescence.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Demonstrate understanding of diverse identities
- Reflect on and share changes in adolescence for self and peers, including identity changes
- Assess how comparing oneself to another person can be healthy or unhealthy
- Discuss the harms and risks associated with hurtful behaviour towards someone related to identity or changes they cannot control
- Demonstrate strategies to support positive identity development for self and peers during adolescence
Big Idea: Healthy Sexuality
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate the knowledge, responsibilities, and skills necessary to make informed decisions about becoming sexually active.
Achievement Indicators:
- Reflect on and share personal values, attitudes, and beliefs about becoming sexually active
- Assess factors that influence consent to and during sexual activity
- Explain laws that govern consent
- Describe factors that contribute to the development of healthy sexuality (e.g., self-pleasure)
- Affirm the diversity of relationships across sexual orientation and gender identity, including sexual relationships
- Explain risk factors for sexual harm, including substance use
- List resources and supports associated with promoting and maintaining sexual health
Big Idea: Self-image
Skill Descriptor: Analyze how media present messages about bodies, sexuality, and relationships.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Reflect on how texts (e.g., media, social media, books, and discourses among peer groups) and social norms influence image of self and peers/community
- Analyze the impact of media on healthy relationships, sexuality and sexual activity, gender roles, and equity
- Discuss factors that contribute to identity-based violence, including media
- Analyze the influence of media, including pornography, on own and societal ideas about relationships and sexuality
Strand: Mental Fitness
Big Idea: Positive Mental Health
Skill Descriptor: Explore the components of positive mental health.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Discuss the role of hope in positive mental health
- Assess how listening and empathy support the positive mental health of peers
- Understand the warning signs of self-harm
- List resources for mental illness and suicide prevention
- Discuss the value of emotional regulation in different contexts
- Demonstrate understanding of how stopping negative thought cycles and/or catastrophizing, overcoming fear of failure, and developing a positive mindset can build resilience
Big Idea: Mental Fitness Strategies
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate skills to improve mental fitness.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Identify strategies to build own positive mental health
- Practise goal-setting in a variety of contexts
- Develop strategies that reduce stigma regarding mental illness
- Reflect on and share strategies for suicide prevention
- Evaluate strategies to self-assess personal growth mindset
Big Idea: Decision-Making
Skill Descriptor: Apply the five components of financial literacy.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS
Achievement Indicators:
- Explain the importance of earning an income
- Create budgets that address needs and wants
- Discuss the benefits, risks, and responsibilities associated with using credit
- Assess options for saving and investment
- List community resources for financial decision-making
Strand: Relationships
Big Idea: Healthy Relationships
Skill Descriptor: Evaluate the influence of respect, empathy, power, and coercion on establishing and maintaining respectful relationships, including sexual relationships.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SASM, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Practise strategies for expressing personal needs, opinions, and choices
- Describe how unmet needs influence own behaviour
- Describe strategies for seeking, giving, withdrawing, and denying consent
- Describe the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships, including repairing harm
- Demonstrate the cultivation of positive relationships with a variety of individuals and groups
- List resources for relationship supports
Big Idea: Bullying and Conflict
Skill Descriptor: Identify strategies for navigating situations where their own or others’ health, safety, or well-being may be at risk.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, ICE, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Identify the characteristics of a community that lives together civilly
- Examine and identify impact of own biases and lenses on community
- Identify different types of conflict resolution strategies and when to best use each
- Reflect on and share bullying and violent behaviour (physical, emotional, and social), including in online spaces
- Discuss situations that are beyond own capabilities and capacity to resolve
- Identify who to turn to for support and to obtain help if needed
Big Idea: Anti-discrimination
Skill Descriptor: Assess strategies to enact anti-discrimination practices in their communities.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, ICE, SASM, SGC
Achievement Indicators:
- Demonstrate a positive commitment to upholding human rights
- Demonstrate attitudes and behaviours that enable people to live together civilly
- Respond to and share diverse cultural expressions
- Respond consistently and effectively when witnessing prejudice, bias, or discrimination
- Describe legal responsibilities required to maintain positive and safe environments
Strand: Career Connected Learning
Big Idea: Thinking About Potential Career Pathways
Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate an informed vision for the future linked to own interests, preferences, values and abilities.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Create informed career pathway and transition plans (including backup plans)
- Reflect on and share insights from career conversations with school, peers, mentors, and family
- Assess reasons why some career pathways might be more fulfilling and suitable than others
- Explain why some people might face barriers in securing their desired career pathways
- Practise strategies to address inequities in the workforce
- Identify supports and interventions needed to achieve desired career pathways
Big Idea: Exploring Potential Career Pathways
Skill Descriptor: Critically investigate and describe the labour market and preferred career pathways.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, ICE, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Discuss feedback on own resumé and cover letter
- Practise job interviews
- Apply labour market information to explore career pathways
- Articulate connections between high school course selections and preferred career pathways
- Describe roles and responsibilities of a range of people doing work in locations outside of my school
Big Idea: Experiencing Potential Career Pathways
Skill Descriptor: Engage in frequent and ongoing career-connected experiential learning to learn about preferred career pathways and develop personal competencies.
Global Competencies: CL, CM, ICE, SASM
Achievement Indicators:
- Describe how career competencies are developed through experiences such as part-time work and volunteering
- Assess needed competencies for desired career pathways using labour market experiences
- Reflect on and share how areas of strength in own competencies lead to preferred career pathways
- Engage in career-connected experiences to develop further competencies needed for success in preferred career pathways