Reproductive Health Resources
Puberty and Reproductive Health can be tricky topics to cover. Below are some resources we feel could be good additions to the curriculum. Please review and ensure that the resource material complies with your district's policies.
Always Changing and Growing Up: Co-Ed
Appropriate Age Level: Grades 4+
Co-Ed Puberty Education is presented in a question-and-answer format with a narrator, real children, and animated graphics. The content ranges from hormones, physical and social changes, proper nutrition, who to talk to, and timing. The Co-Ed video covers changes for both girls and boys and how they may differ.
Always Changing and Growing Up: Boys
Appropriate Age Level: Grades 4+
Puberty Education for Boys is presented in a question-and-answer format with a narrator, real children, and animated graphics. The content covers the same competencies as the Co-Ed video but without information relating to the female reproductive system.
Always Changing and Growing Up: Girls
Appropriate Age Level: Grades 4+
Puberty Education for Girls is presented in a question-and-answer format with a narrator, real children, and animated graphics. The content covers the same competencies as the Co-Ed video but without information relating to the male reproductive system.
TED-Ed: Why do women have periods?
Appropriate Grade Levels: Middle/High School
A handful of species on Earth share a seemingly mysterious trait: a menstrual cycle. We're one of the select few mammals on Earth that menstruate, and we also do it more than any other animal, even though it's a waste of nutrients, and can be a physical inconvenience. So where's the sense in this uncommon biological process? TED-Ed describes the history and evolution of menstruation.
TEDWomen: Why can't women talk about periods?
Appropriate Age Level: Teachers, Middle/High School
"It shouldn't be an act of feminism to know how your body works," says gynecologist and author Jen Gunter. In this revelatory talk, she explains how menstrual shame silences and represses -- and leads to the spread of harmful misinformation and the mismanagement of pain. Declaring the era of the menstrual taboos over, she delivers a clear, much-needed lesson on the once-mysterious mechanics of the uterus.
TED-Ed: The surprising effects of pregnancy
Appropriate Age Level: Middle/High School
Muscles and joints shift and jostle. The heart's pounding rhythm speeds up. Blood roars through arteries and veins. Over the course of a pregnancy, every organ in the body changes. Initiated by a range of hormones, these changes begin as soon as a pregnancy begins. Explore what we know— and don't know— about pregnancy's effects on the body and brain.
Radiolab: Gonads
Appropriate Age Level: Teachers, Middle/High School
Radiolab Presents: Gonads is a multi-episode journey deep into the parts of us that let us make more of us. Longtime staff producer and host Molly Webster explores the primordial roots of our drive to reproduce, introduces a revolutionary fertility procedure that sounds like science fiction, reveals a profound secret about gender that lives inside all of us, and calls on writers, educators, musicians, artists and comedians to debate how we’re supposed to talk to kids about sex.