dCurricula

Background

SleepEd works directly and intimately with each teacher as the sleep curricula is integrated into class plans as well as through the teaching process. To produce the most effective teaching material possible, SleepEd provides support from experts in the field of sleep to make any appropriate modifications. An adapted curricula is available for both college courses and middle school/junior high students.

 

The Curriculum

The SleepEd high school curricula is an intensive one-week overview of sleep followed by a long-term evaluation of each student’s sleeping habits. The biological determinants, sleep patterns, long-term effects on health, and public policy of sleep are explored in-depth.
In the one-week curricula, each day focuses and expands on a different aspect of sleep on topics through discussions, interactive activities, games, and student presentations. Interactive activities include investigating personal sleeping habits by tracking students’ sleep throughout each week. This allows each student to create and maintain a schedule in which they obtain their nightly sleep requirement. This is important not only for understanding sleep during the week-long course, but also for helping students manage their sleep to remain more alert for the remainder of the year and lives. Through group presentations, students teach and present material to the class, while testimonies and recent headline news stories help emphasize the dangers of sleep deprivation that occur in our everyday lives. In addition, students engaged with fun games and interesting discussions that often involve their personal lives or experiences.

 

Extended Curriculum

The extended curriculum incorporates a sleep journal along with questionnaires, outreach projects, and data analysis. In an attempt to set a regular sleep schedule, detailed sleep journals are kept to monitor each student’s specific sleep tendencies as well as subjective feelings of alertness and mood. At the same time, overall class data is charted each week to visually demonstrate the improvement in health, alertness, and academic performance that accompanies increased sleep. In the culmination of the course, the students complete a rigorous project evaluating their sleep journal data that has been collected over the previous months/weeks. This project reinforces the necessary skills of statistics, mathematics, biological application, and data interpretation. An educational outreach project also promotes the awareness of the community as the students themselves become more cognizant of the importance of sleep.

 

General outline of the topics covered each day of the week

Class 1: Introduction to Sleep
• Student testimonials
• General characteristics that define sleep
• Sleep debt
• Weekly Sleep log

Class 2: Basics/Biology of Sleep
• The brain never sleeps
• Biological clock
• REM and non REM sleep
• Clock dependent alerting and circadian rhythm
• Opponent process model

Class 3: Managing Your Sleep/Sleep Tips
• Managing/reducing sleep debt
• Naps
• Surviving driving
• Sleep tips
• Delayed/advanced sleep phase syndrome
• Jet lag

Class 4: Sleep Disorders
• REM behavior disorder
• Lucid dreaming
• Insomnia
• Sleep terrors
• Sleepwalking
• Sleep starts
• Sleep paralysis
• Restless legs syndrome
• OSA and CPAP
• Narcolepsy

Class 5: Closing Thoughts
• Recent headline news stories of disasters caused by sleep deprivation
• Testimonials
• Health
• Making a weekly sleep schedule
• Can we get too much sleep?
• Sleepiness dulls the competitive edge
• Starting school later
• Parallels with driving under the influence of alcohol

 

 

This curriculum is usually packaged with the Stanford Sleep Book.

SleepEd is a non-profit organization, so any nominal costs associated with the curricula are the exact value of the cost of production and shipping. With this goal, most textbooks and curricula are donated to schools and teachers from funds that SleepEd has fundraised or received itself as a donation.

Please contact Kenneth Mah about curricula development and Cheri Mah about program placement into high schools.