I decided after giving my basketball
team a pre-assessment on the topic of healthy eating that I would teach my
lesson to them because I am in a long term substitute position currently in a
subject area I won’t regularly be teaching.
Also, after analyzing the data I compiled from the pre-assessment, I
found that my team needs a lot of educating when it comes to their diets. The data I collected showed that my players
honestly didn’t know much about where calories come from and therefore, they
don’t make healthy eating choices. The
day after I gave my pre-assessment, I decided to give them an assignment during
our study hall that made them research on where calories come from. I split the team up into 3 groups with each
group assigned a macronutrient. Once
they did their research, they had to go up in front of the team and give a
report on their findings. They needed to
explain what are good and bad choices for their macronutrient as well as how
they affect the body.
On October
15 I taught my lesson plan to my basketball team during study hall. From the research they did the previous
meeting, I had each player explain what the 3 macronutrients are and what are
positive eating choices for each. This
was the warm up for the lesson and I gave them about 5 minutes to
complete. Once they had completed the
warm up, we went over their answers as a group to check for understanding from
the previous lesson in case there was some confusion. There was still some confusion as to what
good fats are compared to bad fats but we discussed that before going into the
lesson. The previous assignment I gave
the team was to look over a menu from a fast food restaurant where they had to
pick the healthiest item on the menu compared to the unhealthiest. We reviewed this information again and they were
much better understanding calories the second time we looked at the menus. I wanted to now put their new knowledge to
test by having players look at items on food labels in grocery stores.
The purpose of
my lesson is to help students be more aware of what they are eating by learning
how to read the ingredient labels on foods.
I had each player bring in 3 different food labels of food they like to
eat and I also told them not to bring in something that is necessarily healthy. I want them to recognize that some of the
food they put in their bodies is really bad for their health as an
athlete. They didn’t hold back on
bringing in the foods they like because there was Flaming Cheetos, candy bars
and sodas brought in to analyze. The objective
of my lesson was to educate my players on ingredients from food labels that are
healthy and unhealthy.
The first
thing I did was split the team into 4 groups of 4 and I gave each group 10 food
labels to analyze. I started with having
them put the labels in order of what they thought was the most healthiest to
most unhealthy. Once each group did
this, they then had to stand up and explain why they made this decision and
explain the calories to the group. Each
group of players did a great job with this and they really understood calories
from our previous lesson. I then
discussed with the entire group about how to read the ingredients of a label
and what they should be looking for. I
explained that the first 2 ingredients of a label are usually the most
important and in most cases that ingredient has the most quantity in that
particular food. Once the groups
understood this, I had them look back over their food labels and make any
changes since they had new information.
Every group decided to move a couple of their labels around and most of
the change dealt with how much sugar the food had in it. They also noticed that a couple labels had
high fructose corn syrup which we discussed is bad for them and those labels
went straight to the bad group.
I found that
once I gave my basketball players some knowledge about what are healthier
choices to make when they are selecting foods, they understood and were able to
make smarter choices. They also learned
how to read labels of foods they eat on a daily basis so hopefully they will
now be more aware of the foods they select. In our next study hall session I am going to
test their knowledge again by giving them a food label that is extremely
healthy and have them explain if it’s a good food or bad. I want to check for understanding to ensure
that they are retaining the information I’ve given them. This experience of teaching my basketball
players about healthy food has really opened my eyes to what they really know
about healthy food. I have decided to
give my teams each year lessons on healthy eating and how it affects their
bodies during competition. It’s
important to me that they understand that the food they put in their bodies
will affect how they play and also how they do in school. If we feed our bodies correctly they will
respond in a positive way and improve performance.
