This is a working draft for Leslie's review. The dependency edges below are a first pass — the diagram and the prerequisite table are the parts to check hardest, since they drive hold-vs-advance decisions.
The course map shows the eight units as a spine — body systems first, health decisions and media last. But the real prerequisite structure isn't a straight line: it's a directed graph. Health & Nutrition builds on itself more than it first appears — the nutrients only make sense once you know the body systems they act on, digestion and energy balance build on the nutrients, and fitness draws on both. A weak concept early doesn't just lower one grade, it cascades into everything downstream that needs it. This page is the map a guide uses to find the concept that's actually blocking a stuck student.
An arrow means “must be mastered first.” Units 05, 06, and 08 each pull from two upstream units — those are the cascade points where one soft prerequisite quietly breaks several later units.
Prerequisite gating
A unit unlocks when its prerequisites are mastered — demonstrated, not merely seen. "Covered in class" is not the gate; a cleared rubric is. The difference matters most at the cascade points, where a soft prerequisite quietly breaks two or three later units.
| Unit | Must have mastered first |
|---|---|
| 01 Body Systems & Wellness Basics | — (entry point) |
| 02 Nutrients & the Science of Food | 01 (nutrients only make sense alongside the body systems they act on) |
| 03 Digestion, Metabolism & Energy Balance | 02 (you can trace how food is broken down only after you know the nutrients) |
| 04 Building a Healthy Diet | 02 (planning a balanced plate depends on knowing the nutrients) |
| 05 Physical Fitness & Exercise Science | 03 (energy balance) + 04 (the diet foundation) |
| 06 Mental Health & Stress | 03 (sleep & metabolism read together) + 05 (activity supports well-being) |
| 07 Disease, Immunity & Prevention | 05 (the fitness-and-recovery data habits carry straight in) |
| 08 Health Decisions, Media & Consumer Science | 06 (mental-health claims) + 07 (disease-prevention claims) |
Gap-cascade diagnosis
When a student stalls late, the visible symptom is rarely the real problem — the broken concept is usually upstream. Trace the arrows backward. Common cascades:
| Late symptom | Upstream concept to check first |
|---|---|
| Weighing a health claim falls apart (Unit 08) | The disease-and-prevention reasoning from Unit 07 — you can't judge a prevention claim without it. |
| Immunity and transmission modeling stalls (Unit 07) | The fitness-and-recovery data work from Unit 05 — the measurement habits it builds carry straight in. |
| Stress-and-sleep tracking loses the thread (Unit 06) | Energy balance from Unit 03 — sleep, metabolism, and stress are read together, not separately. |
| Fitness measurements don't add up (Unit 05) | Where the energy numbers come from — Unit 03, digestion, metabolism & energy balance. |
Using the graph to plan a re-attempt
The graph turns a "not yet" into a targeted re-attempt instead of a whole-unit re-teach. When a student fails a downstream demonstration:
- Trace backward to the upstream node the symptom points to.
- Re-attempt the upstream concept first — close the gap at its source, not where it surfaced.
- Then re-run the downstream demonstration. Often it passes without any re-teaching of the downstream unit at all, because the cascade is resolved.
This is also where the integration guide matters: some health concepts lean on an applied-math idea — proportional reasoning for serving sizes and energy balance, reading rates and graphs for fitness data — from another spoke. When the upstream health node looks solid but the student still stalls, check the cross-disciplinary dependency before re-teaching the health concept.