Colorful plate!
By: Lynn Morris

The students in the class will be introduced to the food pyramid and food portions. The students have just completed a unit about physical fitness and how to stay physically healthy. They will now be introduced to ways of staying healthy by the things that they eat. At this stage the students should have been introduced to classifying. In the third grade they learned how to categorize fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and meats into the proper areas.

Analyze Learners
This is a fourth grade class. There are 18 students, 11 boys and 7 girls. All of the students are from military families. The students have just completed a unit about physical fitness. We have had informal discussions about eating healthy food in our classroom. The majority of the students are well behaved, but sometimes I have to refer to my stop sign behavior chart to remind them to stay on task. There are two deaf students in my classroom. I have an interpreter who interprets for them during the entire class time. Both of these students are very intelligent and enjoy working in groups and participating in hands on activities. This class has a mix of low SES to medium SES. All of the students in this class enjoy working in groups. They tend to be more creative and responsive when I present lessons in this genre.


State Objectives
Students will:

*List all foods consumed for a one day period.
*Analyze worksheet with different serving sizes.
*Develop a graph that indicates one day’s food consumption.
*Develop a graph that indicates the recommended daily food allowance for the food groups.
*Compare their daily graph to the recommended daily allowance graph that they created.
*List areas from the food pyramid that they need to eat more from.

The students will be put into groups with three in each group. The students will work together to compile their data. Each group will work together to fill out their worksheets. They will also work together to create their graphs in Microsoft excel. The classroom has 5 computers so the students will have to take turns creating their graphs.

Select Instructional Methods

Methods

Group Learning
The teacher will introduce the new food pyramid to the classroom using an overhead projector. The teacher will then have a group discussion about portion sizes. The teacher will explain the new food pyramid and the importance of knowing how food looks as ounces and cups. Plastic foods will be provided along with other items that the students will be able to pass around, in order for them to see a visual representation of the approximate ounces and cup sizes for the different foods. The students will be broken into groups to complete the worksheet regarding portion sizes. The teacher will then discuss the group results with the class. The class will discuss why or why not they agree with each other’s answers.

Individual Learning
The students will list foods that were consumed during their lunch period, during breakfast, and from the previous night’s dinner. The students will indicate the amount they consumed for each item.

Media
· The food Pyramid will be projected onto the wall using the overhead projector.

Materials
· Overhead projector, transparency with food pyramid, worksheets, excel instructions page, pencils, plastic food items to be passed around the classroom, computers, printer, computer paper.

Utilize Media and Materials

Preview the Materials: The teacher should be fully aware of all aspects of the food pyramid.

Prepare the materials: The teacher should ensure that all of the materials are available before the lesson. The plastic food should be easily assessable and ready for the lesson. The overhead projector should be out and operational. The worksheets for both activities should be copied and ready to pass out to the class. All materials should be in an easily accessible area to minimize waiting time during the lesson.

Prepare the environment: The computers should be turned on and ready for use. They should be checked to ensure that they all have access to excel.
Prepare the learner: The teacher should give the students a few moments to calm themselves and prepare for the lesson. The students will be returning from lunch and will require a few minutes do decompress. The teacher should give the students a brief review of classifying foods from the previous year of learning. The students should be allowed to ask any questions they may have before the teacher goes into the lesson of the afternoon.


Require Learner Participation

Serving Size worksheet – Each student must discuss the worksheet within their group. Each student will be required to state at least one opinion about a serving size activity on their worksheet. Each student will be required to fill in at least one answer in their own handwriting.

Food Consumption Worksheet – Each student will write their daily food consumption onto a group worksheet. They will be required to write down the amount in ounces and in cups.

Group 2



Graphs

The students will go to the computer and open an excel worksheet. They will then type their group member’s names into cells A2, A3, and A4. They will then type the 5 food groups into cells B1, C1, D1, E1, F1. The students will then take turns entering their data into the cells that correspond with their name and food items. When the students enter an amount for ounces, they should enter it using a decimal (0.03)
The students will then select one student to click on A1 and drag it to F4, which will highlight all of their data. This student will then click insert, then click bar, then select which bar graph that the group would like to select for their report. The graph will then be automatically generated.

The students will then create a new graph to represent the MINIMUM recommended daily allowance. They will create this on the same page. They will click on A20 and type in RDA. They will then enter the food groups into B19, C19, D19, E19, and F19. A different student will then enter the minimum RDA from the food pyramid that will still be projected onto the board. The third student will click on A19 and drag it to F20. The student will then click insert, then click bar, then select which bar graph that the group would like. The graph will be automatically generated.

The student will then press and hold the shift button and click on both bar graphs to select them. The student will then press and hold the control button and press c. The student will then open a word document. The student will then press and hold the control button and press v. This will copy the two bar graphs into the word document. The students will then print their document. The students have printed many documents before and should be proficient at this.

The students will then compare their two graphs to see if they have eaten the recommended daily allowance for the day. The students will then be told to write in their homework journal about their results. If the students did not meet the RDA, they should explain why they did not. If they did meet the RDA, they should talk about how they learned about healthy eating habits. If they ate too much in a category, they should explain how this could impact their health.



Evaluate and Revise

Content: Were the students able to list the foods that they consumed over a one day period? Did the teacher have to pull the information out of the students while walking around the room checking on the groups? Students will turn in their group worksheets.
Were the students able to complete the serving size worksheet without difficulty? Did the teacher have to spend a lot of time answering questions while she walked around the room? How did the class do as a whole on the worksheets?
What was the difficulty level of the excel bar graph? Were the students able to work together to complete the activity? Were the students able to follow the written instructions to step by step create the graph? Did the students work well within their groups? Did they take turns on the computer application?
Were the students able to compare their data to the FDA data? Were they able to verbalize their opinions about the differences with their groups? Were the students able to write about the comparison that they observed between the two graphs? How valid was their comparison? Did their graph show the true results?



References

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
http://www.mypyramid.gov/
http://www.fns.usda.gov/TN/Resources/mpk_level2intro.pdf