What's Eating You? A Food and Nutrition Unit
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What’s Eating You? A Food and Nutrition Unit
Unit Description and Rationale:
This nutrition unit was developed with the backwards design concept created by Wiggins and McTighe (1998). This method includes looking at objectives, goals, and state standards with respect to curriculum. It also holds the value of teacher and student interest with high regards in terms of motivation. The next step within this process is to then determine what is considered acceptable evidence for student understanding and proficiency. The final step is to plan learning experiences and instruction based upon the acceptable evidences devised. With the Pennsylvania State Standards and the AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks as guidelines for unit content, I adapted this particular unit with student well being in mind. Each investigation activity gives the student a tool to help them make well informed choices for a healthy diet. This particular unit consists of four investigation activities, one performance assessment, and a formal assessment. It is designed for 5th and 6th grades in either a health or science classroom. It was also designed with the Philadelphia School District in mind, where supplies might not be abundant but still an inexpensive way to undertake an inquiry approach to nutrition. Students will have an opportunity to share their concepts with the class prior to each investigation; this is where the teacher will be able to help guide students away from misconceptions if need be. The performance assessment will enable students to bring all investigations together to a final product that will be observed by the class and teacher.
Enduring Understandings:
1. All living things must satisfy their basic needs for energy, water, living
space and stable internal conditions.
2. Lifelong health is determined by genetics and by balancing nutrition and fitness.
3. Dietary requirements vary for individuals based on age, activity level,
weight and overall health.
4. Scientific processes are used to conduct investigations and build explanations.
Content Standards:
The School District of Philadelphia currently does not have a core curriculum implemented for Nutrition classes; this is due to the fact that it can either be taught by a Physical Education teacher or a Science Education teacher. The state, however, has specific standards which the district must address.
1. Academic Standards for Health, Safety and Physical Education, PDE 7/2002
10.1.6.C - Analyze nutritional concepts that impact health.
• caloric content of foods
• relationship of food intake and physical activity (energy output)
• nutrient requirements
• label reading
• healthful food selection
2. AAAS Benchmarks – Project 2061
• The amount of food energy (calories) a person requires varies with body weight, age, sex, activity level, and natural body efficiency. 6E/M1a
• Scientific investigations usually involve the collection of relevant data, the use of logical reasoning, and the application of imagination in devising hypotheses and explanations to make sense of the collected data. 1B/M1b*
• What people expect to observe often affects what they actually do observe. Strong beliefs about what should happen in particular circumstances can prevent them from detecting other results. 1B/M3ab
• Some living things consist of a single cell. Like familiar organisms, they need food, water, and air; a way to dispose of waste; and an environment they can live in. 5C/E1
Essential Questions:
1. In what ways does different eating affect my health? What about fitness levels and health?
2. How could a healthy diet for one person be harmful for another?
3. Why are there so many health problems in the United States caused by poor nutrition despite all of the available information?
4. How do humans satisfy their basic need for energy?
5. How do scientific processes help us understand more about nutrition?
Misconceptions / Problems:
Misconceptions can vary within the classroom setting; they can be thought of as mistakes, misleading ideas, misinterpretations of facts and even preconceptions of ideas (Blosser, 1987). Students tend to use their own life experiences to explain (both correctly and incorrectly) the reasoning of scientific concepts. One main problem is that teachers don’t always know how to correctly identify misconceptions when they are presented in class. Teaching science as if there were no prior experiences to the topic at hand is usually the culprit. Children tend to develop parallel explanations of concepts; they are usually inconsistent with the actual scientific concept and are most likely created due to a need to keep the real world and school separate (Blosser, 1987). Blosser also states that misconceptions can often “slide” by teachers due to students learning labels and phrasing that can pass for understanding of content. This can usually be caught by checking for underlying understanding by using ideas in slightly different contexts. Asking students to provide examples and counter examples, identifying the critical attributes that counter examples lack, and providing an environment within the classroom that supports the students’ ideas without fear of ridicule and/or grading pressure are ways to help students eradicate previous misconceptions (Blosser, 1987).
In a study regarding the concept of “fattening” foods, 30% of the subjects felt they could eat as much as they liked if they moderated their fat intake, while only 28% felt it was important to check the energy content of the foods they consumed (Timperio, A., Burns, C., Cameron-Smith, D., Crawford, D., 2003). The study also revealed that over half the subjects (55%) believed that saturated fats were more “fattening” than unsaturated fat; and few respondents agreed (16%) that product labeling such as “reduced fat”, “low fat”, “diet” and “lite” are not “fattening” (Timperio, A., Burns, C., Cameron-Smith, D., Crawford, D., 2003).
Some problems found with students regarding nutrition isn’t primarily misconception based. While having the knowledge of science helps inform choices in respect to nutrition and exercising, it does not guarantee healthy decision making (AAAS, 2008). The concept of “good” nutrition can vary from healthcare provider to healthcare provider as new information accumulates, but the core foundation of nutrition is very stable. “Some students believe that food and water have equivalent nutritional consequences; height and weight are similarly influenced by the amount of food eaten; and energy and strength result from exercise but not nutrition” (AAAS, 2008).
Student may have misconceptions with energy and energy sources and confuse the two concepts. They may also have a problem with the transformation of food into usable energy, therefore focusing on energy transformations. This gives the teacher an excellent opportunity to reinforce the prior knowledge of conservation of energy and where it comes from and where it goes (AAAS, 2008).
When it comes to scientific inquiry, the problem lies within hoping students get the entire concept via investigation. This however is not possible and only a part of the total science experience can be learned through observation and inquiry (AAAS, 2008). It is important to help facilitate student learning and how science works but it is also equally important to supplement it with appropriate readings (AAAS, 2008).
Key Knowledge: – What will students understand as a result of this unit?
1. Students will understand that carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and vitamins are components of food.
2. Students will understand the information provided to them on food labels.
3. Students will understand vocabulary associated with nutrition.
4. Students will understand the importance of using investigation practices in determining nutritional value of foods.
Key Skills: – What will students be able to do as a result of this unit?
1. Students will be able to demonstrate how to properly use nutrient indicators such as acid, vitamin C, sugar, and fat in foods.
2. Students will be able to make informed decisions by gathering information about food products.
3. Students will be able to relate the results of investigations and experiments to the amount of chemicals in foods.
Key Beliefs: – What will students believe about nutrition when they are done?
1. Students will believe that they can influence their health by controlling their diet.
2. Students will believe that reading labels is an effective way to become aware of nutrient contents within foods.
Prior Knowledge: – What do students know prior to this unit?
Students should be learning this unit concurrently with energy transformations. They should be able to understand that energy can be transferred in different forms such as heat, light, motion of objects, chemical, and elastically distorted materials.
Students are familiar with the concept that food provides fuel and materials for growth and repair of body parts (AAAS, 6E/E1a*). Vitamins and minerals, present in small amounts in foods, are essential to keep everything working well (AAAS, 6E/E1b).
Unit Schedule:
Day(s) 1-3: Pre-Assessment, The Fat Test
Day(s) 4-6: The Sugar Test
Day(s) 7-9: The Acid Test
Day(s) 10-11: Free Lunch (See Appendix A for Expanded Activity and Activity Sheets, Appendix B for Response Sheet, Appendix C for Assessment Chart)
Day(s) 12-14: Presentation of Performance Assessment / Formal Assessment. (Appendix D for Formal Assessment)
Assessment/Investigation/Inquiry Evidence:
Performance Assessment: “A Meal to a Healthier YOU!”
Goal: The student’s goal for this performance assessment is to create a dinner time meal that is considered nutritious based upon what they have learned in class. This requires them to use food testing of fat, sugar, acid, and vitamin C. If possible, students should attempt to calculate the calories of each food either using labels or additional resources such as or calorie-.
Role: Students will be able to act as dieticians trying to help someone choose a nutritious meal for a healthier life style.
Audience: Students will have to present to the instructor as well as the classroom.
Situation: Students will be given directions that outline their task and a rubric that indicates the point value system for each criterion. Students should be able to justify why they chose each component of the meal based on previous investigation tools and/or research. Students have the liberty to choose which person in their household they are preparing the menu for. Students need to pay specific attention to dietary restrictions and/or health problems that might be specific to the person they choose. If a student picks someone that has no dietary restriction, they must indicate who might have an issue with their menu and why.
Product: Students will complete a poster board and use that as their guide for their classroom presentation. Their final report should be attached to the presentation board. Students will also create an advertisement poster explaining the benefits of their hypothetical meal.
Rubric: 100 point assignment
10 points – Identify the person you are creating the meal for. This could be someone made up to make it more interesting, as you must list health issues if possible. Also, you must identify possible problems for other people who could ea this meal.
15 points – You must identify all foods being used for their meal.
30 points – You must use the fat test, sugar test, and acid test (where applicable) on each item in the meal. It is suggested that student’s use a digital camera to show work progress for their poster board.
5 points – Accurate use of websites to verify results from above.
25 points – Poster board with pictures and final report attached. Pictures and printouts should be used where appropriate (including printouts of food labels found from above).
15 points – Advertisement of planned meal that details benefits of eating it. This is basically a nice summary of everything you’ve all done above in a neat little colorful package!
Connection to “Big Picture”: Students are able to use their knowledge from previously learned activities to create a meal based upon informed data. This helps them become “smart” consumers when it comes to nutritional data. This activity is based on all of the Enduring Understandings:
EU#1 – Humans need to eat to satisfy basic energy requirements. This meal should be designed to maximize nutritional values.
EU#2 – Students may not be able to maximize there genes, but they can balance out what they eat by choosing good nutritious menus.
EU#3 – Even if students are not planning for someone with special needs based on health reasons, they must include suggested caloric values based on the recommended daily values learned in class. They should also identify how their meal might actually be “harmful” to others.
EU#4 – Students will be incorporating all of the investigation activities to achieve this project. They must use scientific processes to complete the investigations as well as this project.
Pre-Assessment Questionnaire: This is non-graded for the purposes of determining student misconceptions.
1. Why do humans eat food?
2. What are there different dietary recommendations for different ages?
3. What are foods made up of?
4. What kind of information does food labels tell us?
5. How does a poor diet affect your health?
Investigation Activity 1: The Fat Test – Adapted from the FOSS Food and Nutrition Kit.
Goal: Students will be able to determine relative amounts of fat in foods by controlling variables in the fat test; they will able be able to estimate the percentage of fat in various foods. Students will learn nutritional information about saturated and unsaturated fats. They will be able to record and compare data and communicate discoveries by using scientific thinking processes.
Role: Students will perform as scientists in this investigation while the teacher should serve as facilitator.
Audience: The facilitator is the audience via the FOSS investigation response sheet.
Situation: The experiment in this activity is for students to determine an estimated fat content of a food by placing it on brown paper and measuring the grease stain left behind using a centimeter grid. Students will be introduced to The Fat Test by the materials required for the investigation. Students will prepare all necessary materials as well as prepare content/inquiry charts; students will also be proactive in maintaining a word wall for this unit which is used for a site tool when students are reading and/or writing within the unit. Students are to use this opportunity to use cooperative learning practices and non-teacher directed. The teacher should constantly monitor the word wall as a non-formal assessment of vocabulary use when students are maintaining the word wall. There will be groups of four student’s each, sometimes working individually or in pairs at times. After preparation of materials, students will then be given their science stories which are found in the FOSS kit (Face the Fats, The Digestive System), introduced to key vocabulary, devise a method of control for the experiment, and review fat-test procedures with those controls. At the end of the experiment, students will be able to compare some food samples for consistency of results as well as different samples for comparison of fat content.
Product: Students will produce word banks, content/inquiry questions based on their results, and turn in a response sheet. Response sheets should be graded for understanding of the concept and provided feedback. It may help to identify common misunderstandings as a class rather than written feedback.
Connection to “Big Picture”: Students will see that inquiry via scientific research is a viable method of determining fat content of foods. They will also learn through their readings that fat isn’t “bad” but should be considered an integral part of a healthy diet. They will also learn via readings that fat should be monitored closely due to it having a higher energy value than other nutrients, and that anything in excess is a poor dietary decision.
Investigation Activity 2: The Sugar Test – Adapted from the FOSS Food and Nutrition Kit.
Goal: Students will observe that dry yeast becomes active when mixed with warm water and a cookie. They will also discover that yeast needs sugar to become active, and produces gas in the process; through this discovery, students will see that yeast can be used as an indicator or sugar. The overall goal is for students to be able to test foods to see which ones contain the most sugar using the yeast method.
Role: Students will perform as scientists in this investigation while the teacher should serve as facilitator.
Audience: The facilitator is the audience via the FOSS investigation response sheet.
Situation: This activity requires three parts. The first part will have the introduction of dry yeast as an indicator for sugar in food. The gas produced when the yeast metabolizes will be used as the indicator of sugar; by measuring the volume of carbon dioxide produced students can then test various foods. The second part will be a sugar test of various cereals. Students will compile their results to rank breakfast cereals by sugar contents. The third part has the students testing a wide variety of foods for sugar.
Product: Students will produce word banks, content/inquiry charts with questions based on their results, and turn in an investigation lab response sheet. Response sheets should be graded for understanding of the concept and provided feedback. It may help to identify common misunderstandings as a class rather than written feedback.
Connection to “Big Picture”: This activity is linked closely to Enduring Understanding three and four. Where students generally understand that sugar can be bad for our teeth and there is a connection to diabetes. What they don’t sometimes understand is why our body requires different nutrition at different stages or the complexities of diabetes. This will be addressed in this unit using the Living with Diabetes, A Sweet Story and Sugar Smarts science stories. There is limited new content in this activity, so students are required to go back and review their old content/inquiry charts. They should be able to make similar connections with previous investigations (i.e. not all food are created equal, some have more sugar, just like others have more fat). Students can then synthesize situations that would occur if intake of sugar were too high.
Investigation Activity 3: The Acid Test – Adapted from the FOSS Food and Nutrition Kit.
Goal: Students will observe that acid and baking soda reacts to form carbon dioxide and that the baking soda can be used as an indicator of acid. Students will test unknowns (fruit juices) for acid and vitamin-C concentration. Students will also discover a relationship between sour taste and acid concentration.
Role: Students will perform as scientists in this investigation while the teacher should serve as facilitator.
Audience: The facilitator is the audience via the FOSS investigation response sheet.
Situation: This activity requires three parts. The first part will have the introduction of baking soda as an indicator of acid in food. The gas produced when the baking soda metabolizes will be used as the indicator of acid; by measuring the volume of carbon dioxide produced students can then test various foods. The second part will have the students use the acid test to determine the relative amounts of acid in a variety of fruits; students will then equate the acid concentration to the taste of those fruits. Students will then be introduced to indophenol; this will give us the ability to test vitamin-C concentration in liquids. Science stories include Your Terrific Tongue, Vitamins, The Scourge of Seafarers, and Linus Pauling.
Product: Students will produce word banks, content/inquiry charts with questions based on their results, and turn in a response sheet. Response sheets should be graded for understanding of the concept and provided feedback. It may help to identify common misunderstandings as a class rather than written feedback.
Connection to “Big Picture”: The Acid Test is linked strongly to Enduring Understandings three and four. Students will have several readings that allow them to connect content to inquiry with the introduction of vitamins. Here they will see that Enduring Understanding one might be a basic need for energy but, not all food sources are created equal in terms of components (as seen in previous investigations). They will read that vitamins are helpful in the body for various reasons and that foods (like sugars and fats) can have different amounts of vitamins. The students realize the importance of choosing foods based on proper vitamin content as needed for a healthy body for various age requirements.
Investigation Activity 4: Free Lunch – Adapted from the FOSS Food and Nutrition Kit.
Goal: This activity will introduce the concept of calorie as an energy source. Students will also learn to read labels on packaged foods for nutritional information and plan hypothetical lunches based on nutritional information provided.
Role: Students will perform as scientists in this investigation while the teacher should serve as facilitator.
Audience: The facilitator is the audience via the FOSS investigation response sheet (Appendix B).
Situation: The step by step expanded activity can be found in Appendix A. Students will learn via reading stories and from prior investigations that foods are often made from combined nutrients. They will guess the identity of lunch items from lists of ingredients. They will then assemble hypothetical lunches from items found within the school cafeteria; they will then be analyzed and assessed for nutritional value and total number of calories based upon food labels and/or web resources. The readings Food Labels, Healthy Eating: International Style, Finding a Cause for Rickets, and Healthy Kids will be included in this investigation activity.
Product: Students will produce word banks, content/inquiry charts with questions based on their results, turn in a response sheet (Appendix C) as well as possible ideas for their performance assessment. Response sheets should be graded for understanding of the concept and provided feedback. It may help to identify common misunderstandings as a class rather than written feedback.
Connection to “Big Picture”: Free Lunch tackles all of the possible Enduring Understandings via one way or another. The calorie is introduced as the unit of energy we need to satisfy one of our basic needs. Students are balancing their meal to be wholesome for their overall health and longevity; they will also be using the reading Healthy Kids to determine what proper nutritional requirements look like for different children; students are also using all of their investigational studies to synthesize a healthy school lunch.
Extension Activity: Now that students are introduced to calories as the unit of energy the body uses, they should be introduced to activities as a way to burn off that energy. Various websites have calculators that can take a person’s weight, height, and age to calculate a fairly accurate picture of how many calories they can burn for a given time frame. Students should then use these websites to find out which activities we could use to burn off our “Free Lunch”.
Sociocultural Ramifications: The addition of the word wall is for helping students with language barrier issues. For students who aren’t English-language learners, we could find the readings in their native languages. For handicapped students I would most likely have a separate rubric that would accommodate their specific needs (i.e. I’ve had students with cerebral palsy that I’ve given a computer based lesson to, the FOSS Online Website would be ideal for these situations). I would provide oral instructions to students with reading disabilities, frequent progress checks with immediate feedback, and utilize cooperative learning experiences to minimize frustrations to students with learning disabilities. This lesson may be sensitive to overweight and/or obese children, however, the standards and curriculum dictate that it be taught. In this case, I would send home a letter to parents explaining that this lesson is coming up and that it will discuss the obesity issues we face in the United States. To help students feel more comfortable, I will share with them my own personal experience of weight-loss.
Formal Assessment: End of Module Assessment for Food and Nutrition (FOSS Appendix D).
Additional Resources
- This is the complete teacher and student resource for this unit from FOSS. It includes many of the reproduction masters that I’ve included here as well as parent letters. You will also find extension practices for students.
- The USDA’s guide to Food and Nutrition can be helpful for student research in the Performance Assessment.
- Good Health and Nutrition Student Desk. Reinforces label reading and includes synthesis projects.
– American Chemical Associations guide to Nutrition. Includes various activities (both online and offline) that help students make the connection to another branch of science.
- This is an alternative curriculum to the FOSS unit that teaches 5th and 6th grades on Food and Nutrition.
- This is an article on what being overweight can do to kids overall health. This would most likely be an assignment that could be given at home to avoid any students feeling uncomfortable with themselves but, could be used to at least give them facts they need.
- This is a fitness activity calculator that students can use to determine the calories burned for each exercise/activity they perform.
- Another Kids Health article (with interactive Java controls) that help with the concept of BMI. Most students will find that this is fairly new material but can still be used as an extension.
- This is Volume IV in a series of Food Nutrition and Science Curriculum projects developed for the Utah State Board of Education. This would be useful for an MG program or 9-12 classroom.
– Calorie King is a website that has the nutritional facts of thousands and thousands different foods.
– Similar to Calorie King.
Appendix A
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Appendix B
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Appendix C
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Appendix D
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