Brenda Zion
Consuming Nutritious Foods
Student Characteristics and Level:
Advanced ESL students who are refugees and have recently come to the
United States after living for several years in a refugee camp.
A.
Instructional
goals/teacher goals:
I want my students to be able to:
1.
Understand nutrition
labels.
2.
Make informed decisions
when buying and consuming food.
B.
Competencies/Student
Objectives:
1.
The student will
demonstrate knowledge of nutrition by being able to:
a.
Find a nutrition label
on a food product and identify the number of calories, fat grams,
carbs and protein grams that are listed. (SCANS Reading)
b.
Define the terms
calories, fat, carbs and protein.
2.
The student will
demonstrate comprehension of nutrition by being able to:
a.
Identify the difference
between two nutrition labels.
b.
Multiply the caloric,
fat, carb and protein amounts by the number of servings in order to
calculate the totals. (SCANS Mathematics)
3.
The student will
demonstrate application of nutrition by being able to compare and
estimate the difference in calories, fat, carbs and protein content
of a serving of french fries versus a similar size serving of
carrots using a caloric dictionary.
4.
The student will
demonstrate analysis of nutrition by being able to identify the
number of advertisements for fast food versus vegetables in a
popular magazine.
5.
The student will
demonstrate synthesis of nutrition by being able to use the website
http://www.mypyramid.gov
to identify how many calories that the individual student should
consume in one day.
6.
The student will
demonstrate evaluation of nutrition by being able to mathematically
compare the difference between how many calories are needed in a day
versus how many calories are in a McDonald’s hamburger using
information found at
http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.index1.html.
C.
Rationale:
Everyone needs to be able to identify what is the truth and that
advertising propaganda exists to influence the consumer. This is
especially true when it comes to nutrition. Many refugees arriving
in the United States are not accustomed to American foods and eating
habits or advertising propaganda.
D.
Content and
Materials, Sites, Games, Activity:
The copies of nutrition labels, the
definitions of the terms, caloric dictionary and popular magazines
would be provided by the teacher. Two websites will be used and are
listed above. The games are below and activities are listed under
“Instructional Procedures.”
E.
Instructional
Procedures:
1. Student
will be presented with information regarding nutrition labels and
their contents including calories, fat, carbs and protein. As a
class, the students will match the definitions of the terms with the
terms.
2. Given
a set of nutrition labels, pairs of students will identify the
difference between the two. Continuing to work together, the pair
will calculate the total counts for calories, fat, carbs and protein
while competing with other pairs.
3. Students
will be assisted in a computer lab in order to find information on
the two websites.
F.
Learning Assessment:
Midway through the lesson a small quiz
over terms and ability to calculate total calories, fat, carbs and
protein will be given. If possible the food that is used should be
something relevant and interesting to the student. (For some
refugees this is difficult because there is not a lot of information
available regarding their native food.)
G.
Small Group Learning:
The small group activities are listed under “Instructional
Procedures.”
H.
Plan B: If the
students were not having success, it would be helpful to bring foods
to school in order to provide examples of carbs, fats and proteins.
Also, a field trip to the grocery store would be helpful.