Lesson Plan

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.


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