- New My Plate Poster Now Available
- Link to School’s Height Weight Survey Project
- New CDC Resource: Staff Development Program on Fostering School Connectedness
- ADA and NASN Launch Website

To kick off the new year, the USDA has created a new MyPlate for Kids poster! This poster for elementary schools promotes making half your plate fruits and vegetables, one of the key concepts of MyPlate. The poster also promotes a few of the recipes from the Recipes for Healthy Kids Competition and refers back to ChooseMyPlate.gov for more recipes. The poster is available in PDF format and in poster format by request from the Team Nutrition website.

Twenty five schools have already submitted data for the 2011-2012 school year. All schools are listed on the Department of Health website once data is received. The information is updated monthly. Schools are encouraged to participate in the data collection process. http://doh.sd.gov/SchoolWeight/Schools.aspx.

The Fostering School Connectedness Staff Development Program is designed to
• Introduce teachers and other school staff members to the concept of school connectedness
• Generate enthusiasm and interest in improving school connectedness
• Initiate implementation of a school connectedness action plan, using ideas from School Connectedness: Strategies for Increasing Protective Factors among Youth


This guide provides step-by-step procedures, activities, materials, resources, and PowerPoint® presentations (with speaker narrative and notes) for implementing two staff development programs – a 45-minute basic overview of school connectedness, or a 2-hour program to develop action plans for improving school connectedness.
To view the entire guide, click here.
To view more CDC resources on Connectedness, click here.

A recently launched website now provides easily accessible oral health information to school nurses. To create this new resource, the American Dental Association (ADA) teamed up with the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) in a project funded by the DentaQuest Foundation. Among other things, this Oral Health Connections website provides school nurses with oral health curricula, classroom teaching tools, and resources to help schoolchildren find access to dental care. It also allows school personnel to participate in an oral health forum and Facebook group that addresses oral health issues. For full article, click here.