Research Scenario
Food is important to our survival. It is also important to our health. But, we need to know the similarities and differences between foods so that we can make healthy food choices for both meals and snacks.
Click the picture of vegetables on the left to go to Visual Thesaurus to get the definition of the word "healthy."
Each day, we eat three meals and some snacks in order to give us energy and help our bodies to grow up healthy and strong. We eat breakfast and dinner at home. At school, our lunches are prepared by cafeteria workers. But, what do we do when we get home from school, hungry, and are faced with choosing a snack?
Essential Question: How does knowing the differences between healthy and unhealthy foods help us to make choices for healthy snacks? |
Task & Product
We will learn about healthy and unhealthy foods.
We will explore online resources and books in our school library to locate information about foods in the Food Guide Pyramid (MiniPoster). We will use the information we found to make a usable project. We will use our project on a field trip to the grocery store to purchase healthy foods for classroom snack time.
After we have learned about healthy and unhealthy foods, we will make a picture shopping list for our field trip. We will also make a poster or a video quiz show for our classroom as a reference for snack time choice-making.
Assessments
We will create a table of the various food groups and use pictures of foods and glue them in the appropriate column.
Questions
How does knowing the differences between healthy and unhealthy foods help us to make choices for healthy snacks? |
Subsidiary Questions:
- Why should we choose healthy foods to eat?
- What are the guidelines we should use when choosing what to eat?
- How much of the foods we choose should we eat?
Gather & Sort
Go to the school library and do a Destiny search with your teacher to locate and check out books on nutrition.
As part of classroom literacy time, read and listen to books about healthy foods and, using pictures and voice-output devices, identify the foods found in the books.
Use magazines and Boardmaker (on the computer) to collect pictures of nutritious foods.
Use baskets labeled with food groups and sort pictures into the appropriate baskets.
Using plastic foods, sort into baskets labeled with food groups.
Organize
We will use more pictures of foods to create our shopping list for our field trip to the grocery store to purchase foods for our classroom cooking lessons and snack time.
Conclusion
Presentation: Students will share their shopping lists with their classmates and take it home to share with their family.
Reflection: Students will continue to use the chart they created to choose healthy foods.
Extension Activity: The students will construct a photo album of healthy food pictures taken with a digital camera when on field trips to the grocery store. They will use the photo album on return trips to the grocery store.