Development of learning-sleep materials for elementary school students in Japan

Abstract

This study aimed to create an elementary school curriculum for Learning-Sleep, review subject content in the health area of physical education, and develop systematic “learning-sleep” materials for developmental stages. First, based on an investigation of health and physical education textbooks and instructional texts, we found that in elementary school, subject content on sleep was addressed in each grade from third through sixth. Next, while creating the teaching tools, we modified figures from the previously published sleep education handbook and also created new figures as needed and, furthermore, we made out a sleep lesson-program based on the handbook we developed. Finally, we examined how it worked on elementary school students. In the student evaluation, the lesson was given high marks, in satisfaction of the lesson, understanding of the content, appropriateness of the materials and applicability to life. In the lesson-observer evaluation, the lesson was recognized as follows: while some modification might be required in the selection of some materials and in the manner of showing, the lesson should work for the improvement of the current sleep conditions of elementary school students. In conclusion, we were able to generally achieve the envisioned goals for learning-sleep and were also able to receive positive feedback in learner evaluations, teacher evaluations, and observer evaluations. Thus, we can conclude that the “learning-sleep” materials developed by us can be effectively utilized in the sleep-related studies in elementary school physical education.