Abstract

Current national educational recommendations suggest incorporating health topics across secondary school curricula. Application of the Positively Aging: Choices and Changes materials, specifically Unit 9 “Watch Your Mouth! Oral Health and Aging,” illustrates that oral health education can be successfully incorporated into middle school reading classrooms. A teacher’s successful implementation of the unit and the alignment of oral health concepts with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills reading objectives are described herein. Compared to pre-test results, increases in student posttest scores were statistically significant (all 2p less than or equal to 0.001) and reflected concept attainment as linked to learning cluster objectives within the unit.