NORTON - Fourth- and fifth-graders will walk the Norton High School track this morning, their latest steps toward learning "to be fit for life," Superintendent Patricia Ansay says.

Concurrently, Norton wellness teachers will be learning "comprehensive nutrition education" during a professional development program hosted by their Foxboro counterparts, Norton Co-Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Amy Berdos says.

Both activities tie into a new K-12 wellness curriculum the school board approved Monday night.

Berdos said wellness teachers and others have worked on the curriculum for two years.

The new document builds on the national standards and the four major topics in the state health curriculum framework - physical health, social and emotional health, safety and prevention and personal and community health -at the local level, Berdos said. Norton's curriculum also addresses issues raised locally, such as the alcohol and drug issues identified in the Communities That Care Youth Survey that grades 6 to 12 took in June, Berdos said.

Berdos said the curriculum reinforces behaviors over the various grades.

"Good hygiene" in elementary school, for example, means something "very different at the middle school," she said.

Norton Middle School wellness teacher George McAuliffe said in sixth grade, he spends considerable time on the "negative effects of alcohol and tobacco."

Seventh-graders hear more about the medical aspects of these drugs, he said. He also promotes that living healthy now will promote healthy living as an adult, he said.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER covers Norton for The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.