Abstract :
Health consciousness among young learners is vital for their lifelong health and academic achievements. This quantitative quasi-experimental research explored how health consciousness at the primary level might be influenced by classroom activities in Kotli, Azad Jammu & Kashmir. It mainly emphasized four health consciousness dimensions: balanced diet, safe use of water, disease prevention, and personal hygiene. A pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design was used. The sample consisted of 4th-grade students of a government girls' school in Kotli, AJ&K. Through convenience sampling, 62 students were picked (31 in the control group and 31 in the experimental group). A multiple-choice test on health consciousness was created and verified by the University of Kotli AJ&K faculty members. Reliability was confirmed by pilot testing (Cronbach's alpha = 0.84). Pretest and posttest were administered for data collection and results were analyzed using SPSS, employing paired-sample t-tests and independent-sample t-tests. The results showed that the experimental group, which was taught through activity-based learning, scored significantly higher in the posttest (M = 33.42, SD = 2.58) than the control group taught by traditional methods (M = 24.18, SD = 3.92). An overall strong, significant positive impact of classroom activities on the health consciousness was seen. Besides, three sub-domains: safe use of water, prevention of disease, and personal hygiene also quite significantly contributed to the difference. On the other hand, there was not any significant difference between the two groups on balanced diet consciousness. The study finds that classroom activities can greatly enhance health consciousness among primary children. Among its recommendations is that science teachers integrate activity-based learning, get in-service training on active learning methodologies, and that curriculum developers increase health-related content with fun classroom activities.