Sunday, October 20, 2013

Lesson Plan on healthy eating and reading labels


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.

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