EDUCATION PORTFOLIO

Together Counts

Together Counts™, a free, award-winning wellness curriculum developed by HWCF and Discovery Education, has reached more than 48.15 million school children in the U.S.— that’s half of all children in grades K—5.

Together Counts™, a free, award-winning wellness curriculum developed by HWCF and Discovery Education, has reached more than 48.15 million school children in the U.S.— that’s half of all children in grades K—5.

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PROJECT OVERVIEW:

From 2012–2018, I wrote content and curriculum for Together Counts™, a free healthy lifestyle program developed by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation in collaboration with Discovery Education. In addition to content for students in grades Pre-K to 5, I developed content for the Enrichment Zone for after-school community programs (including 4-H, the YMCA and the Girl Scouts). Together Counts™, a free, award-winning wellness curriculum, has reached more than 48.15 million school children in the U.S.—that’s half of all children in grades K—5. This has been made possible through a coalition of 300 corporate and not-for-profit partners, including General Mills, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Girl Scouts of America, the United Way and the YMCA.

CHALLENGE:

In 2019 I was hired to develop and manage all new content and curriculum for the entire Schools section of TogetherCounts.com, including new curriculum for grades 6–8. This involved:

  • Creating a new conceptual framework to reflect the newly expanded approach to Health & Wellness recommended that year by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

  • Developing new and updated Together Counts™ lesson plans for four grade bands (Pre-K, K–2, 3–5 and 6–8)

  • Managing, creating and/or editing all copy and content for Schools section of website

  • Coordinating educator reviews from a cross-section of U.S. states and incorporating feedback from the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and FDA (Food and Drug Administration)

  • Ensuring alignment with national education standards and frameworks for use by teachers in U.S. public and independent schools nationwide

SOLUTION:

I began by tackling the conceptual challenge: How to create an effective, engaging, scalable graphic to convey key points and carry them throughout the curriculum? Rather than doing this post-copywriting, I brought in a design colleague at the very beginning to brainstorm ideas and try different solutions. After getting approval on a winning visual (replacing the old “Wellness Triangle” with a new graphic called the “Wellness Wheel”), I moved on to planning, scheduling and outlining all the content and curriculum pieces for the different grade bands.

For the Pre-K, K–2 and 3–5 sections, I developed the content myself and had it reviewed by educators specializing in those grade bands. For the Farming Spotlight science curriculum, I hired a science teacher/farming program coordinator to design some of the lessons and to review the others. For the Educator Spotlight training modules and the grade 6–8 science sections, I created all of the slide shows and teacher scripts myself. At the end, I tallied up all the chunks of content I’d created, wrangled and reviewed and listed them here: [link to blog post -- Back-To-School: Creative Content Writing & Curriculum Development https://sallysisson.squarespace.com/config/pages/5ee2756ed0ede76dc79d5cd1