Emily's Nutrition Unit - Let's Get Healthy!

Welcome to my third grade nutrition unit! In this unit, my third grade students will participate in a series of four lessons to learn about nutrition. Each lesson will cover several NC Standard Course of Study objectives and involve technology (See the Nutrition Overview and Write Up Document). Throughout the unit, the students will participate in activities in response to the following prompt :

Congratulations! You have just been hired as the head chef of the prestigious New Hope Café. The motto of this café is, “We serve food that is delicious AND nutritious!” The menus of the New Hope Café are known worldwide, because when people eat the healthy foods at the café, they feel great! In order to continue this healthy menu tradition, as head chef, you will be expected to prepare menus that are both healthy and taste great.

Before you begin your job, you will need to learn about what foods and beverages are nutritious and how many servings people need each day.

Day One

• Introduction
• Brainstorm and chart places we can find information.
• Use the student page of our Third Grade Website to access the kid-friendly search engines website. Use that site to find information about the Food Guide Pyramid.
• Sort food cards on the Food Guide Pyramid.
• Analyze food labels for nutrition information.

Day Two

• Discuss calories and participate in a, “What is a calorie?” activity.
• Edit and add information to the Calorie Spreadsheet.
• Observe and interpret the graph as we change the data.
• Discuss serving size/portion size.

Day Three

• Analyze ingredient labels for various beverages.
• Sort beverages into “healthy” and “unhealthy” categories.
• Discuss the health affects of consuming unhealthy beverages.
• Create a Healthy Beverage Brochure to distribute to our buddy class to inform them of the difference between healthy and unhealthy beverages and the negative affects of consuming unhealthy beverages.

Day Four

• Use what we learned in the previous three lessons to create healthy menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
• Edit and add information to a Multimedia Presentation to present to the other third grade classes about nutrition. Include the menus.
• Present the information to each other.

Assessing Student Learning

I learned two great strategies this summer to evaluate student learning. They are using games for informal assessments and using rubrics for formal assessments. In my unit I will use the following:

• Play “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” game.
• The Rubistar Rubrics to assess the multimedia presentation.

My Use of Technology as an Educator

Technology enhances my productivity and communication as an educator. To demonstrate this I have created:

• A Classroom Website – to effectively communicate with parents, colleagues, and students.
• Rubrics – to quickly and accurately assess student learning.
• Inspiration Documents– to organize ideas and thoughts for my website, units, and lesson plans.
• Classroom Blogs – to post announcements to parents and students
• A Picassa Account – to display pictures of students. (This will be linked to our website in the photo gallery).

View the Audio Transcript.

I hope you enjoy my unit!