HOW TO USE THIS UNIT

RATIONALE

This unit is a webquest on nutrition and obesity. As you navigate through the site (by going through the menu on the side), it gets student's feet wet with regards to these two topics. This site serves a two-fold objective: to create a knowledge base regarding nutrition and to open student awareness regarding obesity and proper nutrition.

UNIT INTRODUCTION

The way I begin this unit is by first explaining to students why we are doing this unit. I take a couple of minutes talking about how the numbers of students who are overweight is increasing every year I teach. I also mention the fact that it is mind boggling to me the fact that in an industrialized nation such as the U.S., where everything has an extra helping of vitamins, there are children who suffer from anemia. I talk to them about certain cases where hereditary disease plays a role, but that many cases are simply caused by  improper nutrition. I talk to them about how I see what they eat for breakfast in the morning: a candy bar or chips and a soda. I speak to them about how it concerns me and about the problems they will face with regards to their health in the present or future if they don't change their eating habits. 

UNIT DEVELOPMENT

After spending some time discussing this, I have students create a Word Web on Nutrition and we discuss their responses and create a large web based on their responses. After this, I have students go to the NutritionQuest index and have them take the Pre-test. We then discuss the results. After discussing the results, I may show the nutrition movie from Brainpop, I also provide students with the quiz questions (Right-click on the link and select Save Target As.. to download to your computer) and let them research the answers. 

We then go to the nutrition page and go over the information together.

The next class you can start off the class by having students take the Discovery Health Assessments Quiz on Saturated Fat. Take some time to discuss with them how their intake of saturated fat is. After discussing the results, student should go to the FDA's Guidance on How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Panel on Food Labels, you can have the students watch the food video before going into the content.  When you finish going over nutrition, students are to:

1) Download the Food Tracker Excel Sheet(Right-click on the link and select Save Target As.. to download to your computer), and track their meals for 3 days. This sheet is setup with 3 meals with Food, Servings, Est.Amt.Calories=Estimated Amount of Calories Per Serving and TotCalories=Total Amount of Calories which is obtained by Multiplying the Servings by the Est.Amt.Calories. At the bottom of the 3rd day, students are given the total amount of calories consumed and their average calorie consumption per day. *Note: Students should download the Freeware program Food Composition (on the Activities Page) to assist students if they do not know how many calories a certain food contains. I was surprised to find a campesino's favorite food plantains on the list, so don't be surprised to find cultural foods there. When explaining how to use the Food Composition Database, I tell the students (using a projector), "How does a camesino find out how many calories does mangu (mashed plantain, popular Dominican food) contain?" I go  step by step and show them how to find out how many calories by doing a search in the database for the word "plantain" and it shows how many calories a cup of mashed plantain contains. I sometimes have the Food Tracker sheet open and by holding down the Alt key and then pressing the Tab key, I switch between Food Composition and the Food Tracker sheet and fill in the information for a sample meal. I tell students that they should take this assignment seriously because we will use the information when we go into the Obesity part of the unit. The more honest and serious they are with regards to putting in the information on the sheet, the better chance they have in determining their health. I also tell them that this gives them a good idea when they are reflecting upon if they are meeting their recommended daily nutritional requirements for their height and build. I appeal to them to look at this assignment for more than simply a grade, but for their lives. Anecdote: While doing this assignment, a student came to me and told me about how her mother was impressed by all that she knew about what they were eating for dinner. This student was proud of the knowledge she acquired and said to me "Good looking out, Sal!" (Which in kid slang sort of means: Keep up the good teaching! I hope).

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 2)keep a food journal for 3 days where they are to record what they ate at every meal, estimating how many serving they consumed at each meal. Students should then compare what they ate to the food pyramid and analyze if their cultural  background played in eating/not eating a balanced diet.

If you need to review serving sizes, go the Discovery School's Eat Right lesson, I tend to use the vocabulary definitions and the explanation on what is a serving to review. If your students have some difficulty understanding the concept, I would recommend using the entire lesson.

When finished with nutrition, have the students go to the page on obesity. I show the BrainPop movie on body weight as an intro.

Students tend to become more introspective at this point, although some students will not recognize this. Take this into account and incorporate the affective domain by taking into account student's feelings as you are teaching. For example, I may ask students what they are feeling at this point, how do they see themselves at this point, what thoughts are coming into to mind as you are learning about this information and you think about your eating habits? Use your judgment with regards to how much time to dedicate to this discussion. I find that I generally have to give at least 15 minutes to the rest of the period. Students in junior high tend to be needier (my personal experience) and at times open up. You may have an extreme case where you may have to refer a student to guidance counseling.  Although there is that risk, the benefits outweigh the risks since students will be cognizant of their situation and with the knowledge learned, many students will begin changes in their lifestyles that hopefully continue for life, and who knows maybe you will too!

Key Points to keep in mind

While going over Nutrition==> what is nutrition, what nutrients are essential and non- essential, saturated fat and our intake of saturated fat, food pyramid, what is a serving, %Daily Value

While going over Obesity==> what is obesity, BMI, consequences of being obese, what is your proper weight, how to treat obesity

While going over Cultural Factors & Obesity==> misconceptions and realities of the relationship between culture and obesity. This can be adopted to different cultures. Students can conduct surveys asking people what generalizations they have with regards to foods such as does eating a lot make you healthy, etc. You can also have students create food pyramids based on cultural foods. Look at U.S. vs Japan for an example.

COOPERATIVE GROUP CULMINATING PROJECT

Next, I have students break up into cooperative groups and come up with three possible questions they would like to investigate and create a website on. Since reluctant students are at times "a dime a dozen", I read to students a quote from John Donne "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent..." and comment to them that success is a team effort in my class as well as in the work place and since this is their job for now, they might as well get used to it now. Click on Website Project to view the assignment.

Students at the end of the unit should create websites or presentations on research questions developed from this site. Below you will find several activities student sites should include. You may have your students do some or all of the activities mentioned. I have students pick 5 from the list below. You may have students working in cooperative groups, but make sure every student in the group creates an activity. Under the activities you will find links to assist students in creating their own. Many of these sites help students create them online.

• Vocabulary Presentation (Click here for the PowerPoint Show or PowerPoint Presentation {Right-click on the link and select Save Target As.. to download to your computer}

• Count their calories for a minimum of 3 days and graph the results (This should be done by every student, even those working in cooperative groups.) Food Tracker or Food Journal

• Crossword puzzle

• Create an activity page

• Word Search

• Word Scramble (see usda.gov site example)

• Students creating a quiz (right-click and select open in new window) in Powerpoint or online on their topic

• A poll relating to their research

TIPS

Assign deadlines for having activities  turned in since students tend to procrastinate. Setting up a timeline beforehand really helps break it down for students and helps keep them on task. If your school doesn't have money to buy a web page creator, then go to Download.com and look for free web page creators. You want to look for ones that are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). These are the simplest to use if you have little or no background in HTML.

Students take a quiz on nutrition after going over the unit and doing research. I prefer to give the quiz before students create the websites.

You may use any of the links below as a motivator or as a refresher to concepts regarding nutrition. The age level varies on each so review the links first.

http://cspinet.org/smartmouth/ Smart mouth.org site: fascinating and information site, contains facts on foods, calorie & saturated fat counter, articles, recipes and video clips on health & nutrition.(Show these videos on health first as a motivator.)Appropriate for junior high to adults.

http://brainpop.com BrainPop movies on many subjects, I like to show the ones on Nutrition and Body Weight. Be judicious on using them since they only allow you to view to two free movies a day. You can get around this by using more than one computer with different IP addresses, if you don't understand this your better off just watching the two free movies per day. Appropriate for junior high.

http://cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/foodlab.html U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Understanding the nutrition facts label: contains information and video. (Use this with students. Should be second or third activity in lesson.) Appropriate for junior high to adults.

http://5aday.org/html/educators/curricula.php Curricula for teachers to use. For younger students, although you can adapt it for older students as well.

http://arborcom.com/searchc.htm#NUTRITION SEARCHING One of the most extensive links on nutrition information and nutrition home pages. A must see. Appropriate for adults.

A good book to help teach about obesity and contains activities for teachers to use with teens is the Eating Disorders Association book titled 'It's not about food, it's about feelings'. You can read more about it and view sample pages at:  http://edauk.com/education_teachers_resources.htm I would recommend reading the book, if you get the chance before beginning the unit.

EVALUATION

After students have completed their websites, use the Website Rubric(Right-click on the link and select Save Target As.. to download to your computer) to assess student projects. Groups present their websites to the rest of the class. Before groups present, I have students setup a spreadsheet with the project names, each title heading from the Website Rubric  and next to it  points given. The last row is for comments which students should write as to why they gave that group the grade that they did. I tell students that they should write at least two sentences to justify the grade(See below for an example.) This way students get two grades, one from me and one from each other. This also helps students pay attention to each others presentations.

SPREADSHEET EXAMPLE OF STUDENT EVALUATION OF GROUPS

If you don't want to use my rubric you can use Kathy Schrock's rubrics.

NOTE:  You do not have to include the questions or page comparing the United States and Japan. This unit may be used solely for its information on nutrition and obesity. 

Click on the bouncing bananas to return to the NutritionQuest Index