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I am interested in finding out ways to incorporate Nutrition into science education for middle school students. I have written lesson plans that ask the students to assess their daily meals by completing a daily meals log and comparing it with a chart about the daily recommended intake of the different nutrients. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about other ways to teach nutrition in a equally engaging way and in a way that would possibly make explicit connections to the students' lives.
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Carmen - I am looking for a similar lesson/activity for our enrichment period. I have been familiarizing myself with the new MyPlate (which replaces the Food Pyramid).
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Another great website, that would also encourage the students to be exercising is mapmyrun.com The students can record any physical exercise they engage in, and also record their food. It is great to see the relationship of how much work it takes to burn calories and how little it takes to eat them.
I have also created a project to use with my students to teach them about organic molecules. It could be adapted to a nutrition lesson. I have them do a Top Chef competition, and they have to create a menu and then find out information about the organic molecules in the food. I do have them figure out the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and lipids in each part of the menu. I will attach the file.
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Carmen,
I recently completed a workshop unit on Nutrition and some of the activities I did may help you. For one activity, students were to create their own "My Food Plate" by dividing up a paper plate and labeling each section a different food group. Students were then to write in all the food items they normally eat in a day. By the end of the activity, the students would be able to see what they eat a lot of and what they don't eat. It is a great tool for them to visualize if their diets are balanced or unbalanced. Another activity included in the workshop was having students identify food labels. Food labels were provided to the students and they had to guess from a list of food items/restaurants which matched with which. It really got students engaged and thinking about the types of food they eat each day.
-Callie
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Carmen,
I was in Callie's cohort for this workshop, and one of the activities I did dealt with flash cards. Take some ordinary nutrition labels (for middle school students, fast food or restaurant labels might work really well) and cross out the name of the food on the label, then take some index cards and write the name of one food on each card. You mix up the index cards choices, and play a matching game to see if the students can determine which nutrition label go to which food based on the information on the nutrition label only. This could lead into discussions of serving size, measurements, ingredients, etc... This really had the students engaged, and the harder you make it with common foods that most students enjoy, the more they will enjoy taking part in it. This could be an excellent way to incorporate scientific processing skills.
Jared
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I really like using the Myplate activity in biology while discussing the macromolecules we are learning. It is a way I can integrate nutrition and health into my unit.
I attached a powerpoint I use in class. Hope this is useful!
-Tarah Dahl
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