Summary

In our "modern" society people have become further and further removed from their food sources to the point that many otherwise intelligent children living in our urban centers believe that food is produced at supermarkets and fresh produce can be grown year round. Hidden Villa is part of the "Slow Food" movement that focuses on helping children learn to make informed decisions about what they eat; encourages communities to eat locally grown produce to the extent possible; and promotes the analysis of the business and advertising practices of large food corporations. This unit, in combination with a class field trip to Hidden Villa, provides a developmentally appropriate way to introduce these concepts.

With the increasing emphasis on standardized testing, we teachers feel more and more pressure to "teach to the test." Even within the standards of the state educational framework there are many crucial topics that are getting left by the wayside in this testing frenzy. In reality, life itself is the ultimate test of the state health standards. Left at the mercy of multi billion dollar advertising campaigns many of our students are making ill-informed choices about what to eat and how to spend their free time. The disastrous effects are already being felt. Childhood obesity and type 1 (early onset) diabetes are at an all-time high. In our classrooms, students have difficulty focusing on and learning from our standards-based lessons when they are wired on sugary cereals, tired-out due to malnutrition or comatose from watching too much television. Therefore, for both our long term (promoting happy, healthy, and productive lives) and short term (supporting successful achievement on yearly standardized tests) goals, it is essential that we equip our students with some concrete nutritional knowledge and critical media literacy skills.

Part I: Introduction to Food Groups

As written, this unit is designed to integrate your Hidden Villa experiences into the study of nutrition after the field trip. However, with a few little changes, this unit could also work as a part of a longer introduction to making Eco-Healthy lunches in preparation for the field trip.

Lesson 1: Making Hidden Villa food cards

Lesson 2: Hidden Villa food card sorting

Lesson 3: Assigning the Hidden Villa food cards to the nutritional pyramid

Lesson 4: Beginning reciprocal teaching

Lesson 5: Continuing reciprocal teaching

Lesson 6: Concluding reciprocal teaching

Lesson 7: Food additive extensions

Part II: Nutrition Labels

If you have not yet taught the short lesson on Eco-Healthy Lunches, be sure to do so before proceeding. In this part of the unit students use what they learned about the components of food to understand nutrition labels. They then use this information to compare the nutritional value of a variety of favorite snack foods.

Lesson 1: Making favorite snack cards

Lesson 2: Sorting favorite snack cards

Lesson 3: Surveying your class' and the school's favorite snacks

Lesson 4: Graphing the results of the snack survey

Lesson 5: Understanding food labels

Lesson 6: Serving sizes and equivalent fractions

Lesson 7: Graphing snack nutritional value in groups

Lesson 8: Nutritional graph group presentations

Part III: Health Risks

By now students should have a firm grasp of the nutritional basics. They are now ready to explore what health risks can arise as a consequence of not following the recommendations of the food pyramid.

Part IV: Why Do We Eat This Junk, Anyway?

At this point, students should be wondering why so many people eat so much food that puts their health at risk. Of course, there are a lot of factors that influence the people's food choices, but the media has a HUGE influence, particularly on a population that is watching increasing amounts of television and surfing the Internet for extended periods of time.

Part V: Action

Ideally, at this point students want to do something with all that they have learned about nutrition. Ask your kids for ideas - you might be surprised by what they come up with.

Lesson Plans

Part I: Introduction to Food Groups

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Many of the lessons in this unit incorporate Shared Reading (SR) and Reciprocal Teaching (RT) techniques. Possible texts for all of these activities can be found under "Download Materials." However, as books on nutrition for kids are fairly easy to come by, you may prefer to find your own. For more information about how to implement the teaching strategies of Shared Reading and Reciprocal Teaching go to "Best Practices" unit found in the introduction to this section on HV Classroom Curriculum.  These lessons focus on reading comprehension standards.

Lesson 1: Making Hidden Villa food cards

Model: Brainstorm all the different foods students think could be produced at Hidden Villa. These could be the actual item (an apple) or what the raw ingredients could be turned into (ie: bacon, cheese, bread). Record these ideas.

Support: Using small strips of stiff paper (cut-up index cards), students work in pairs or small groups to write the name of the food with a little drawing on the front side. On the back side, students list any information that they know about this food. Some things students might think about are: what it is made from, where they saw it at Hidden Villa, what natural resources are needed to produce it and what nutritional value it might have. Students should complete as many cards as possible depending on their level.

Share: In a circle, have each student share one of the foods they came up with and some of the information they know about this food. Students will have to pay close attention to what their classmates say so as not to repeat foods. Record your students' ideas on larger slips of paper.

Lesson 2: Hidden Villa food card sorting

Orientation: Each group will be working together to sort their HV food cards in their own way. Most students should be familiar with the concept of sorting based on different characteristics. However, you may still want to review the concept of a "free-sort."

Model: Start by sorting together as a class. Say, "For our first sort, I would like for you to divide your cards into those that you can eat right from the farm and those that need to be prepared." Circulate to support partners that may need help. Then ask, "Does anybody else have an idea for how we could sort our cards?" Listen to a few ideas and choose one that seems simple. Have your class sort their cards again in this new way.

Brainstorm: Think-Pair-Share: Have students think of other characteristics they could use to sort their cards with their partners and share these ideas with the class. Remind students that some sorts might have more than just two groups (ie: sorting by color). List their ideas on the board.

Support: Each pair chooses a way to sort their HV food cards into different groups based on a certain characteristic (a new idea or an idea from the class list on the board). When they have physically sorted their cards, they should write their groups down in their notebooks and come up with a short summary that explains their groupings. Then encourage your students to follow the same steps to sort their food cards again in a different way.

Share: As time allows, have different students explain how they sorted their HV food cards. After each presentation, if you want, invite a few volunteers to sort the class HV food cards on the board (or rug) using the categories the previous group just explained.

Before: Draw a large representation of the food pyramid on chart paper. There are several different pyramids in use - use the one you think will be most helpful to your students (See Download Materials).

Orientation: Explain that nutritionists classify foods according to their nutritional value for our bodies. They have designed many ways to help us understand the nutritional value of what we eat and how much of each type of food we should eat. Introduce the nutritional pyramid to your students.

Support: Using their photocopies of the food pyramid (see Download Materials) students work together as a group to place each of their HV food cards. In their notebooks they should write down these groupings and include a justification for their decisions.

Share: Using the teacher set of HV food cards, guide a class discussion to decide where each food item should go on the pyramid. When the class is more or less in agreement, invite a student to tape this card to the pyramid in the chosen place (note that at this point this doesn't have to be the "correct" answer).

Orientation: To understand the nutritional value of each type of food, we need to understand the components that make up the foods we eat. There are three different components of food that give us energy: carbohydrates, proteins and fats. There are also other components that do not give us energy but are important to maintaining health, such as fiber, minerals and vitamins. Understanding these will help us look back and decide if we put the foods in the correct place on the food pyramid.

Model: Teach or review the steps for reciprocal teaching as you start the food pyramid shared reading (download materials).

Support: In groups, students take turns in the "teacher" role as they guide their group through the reciprocal teaching steps for each passage about calories (download materials). This is a good place to start as many students (and adults) are confused about what a calorie is, even though it is referred to frequently in the media.

Share: Guide a class discussion about the information they learned, as well as a reflection about each group's process with the RT steps.

Note: I recommend spending the time to have your students all read about each of the different food components. This gives all students a chance to really learn about the food they eat while also giving a wonderful opportunity to practice important reading skills through the RT steps. However, if you are pressed for time, instead of guiding the class as a whole in reading about a new component each day, you could assign groups different components to work on and have them present what they learned to the class at the end of the period.

For each day that you guide your class in learning about the components of food, I recommend the following lesson structure:

Shared Reading: As you continue to work with the shared reading about the food pyramid, continually model the RT steps, gradually turning over the teacher responsibilities to student volunteers. At the end of each passage, model how to think through choosing 3-5 most important content words to highlight.

Reciprocal Teaching: In pairs or small groups students follow the RT steps. During the step of "summarize" students will talk together to choose the 3-5 most important content words to express the information of each passage. They should highlight these on their page or write them down on a separate piece of paper.

Share: Ask students to share one of the words they highlighted in the reading and to justify why they chose it.

Synthesize: As students share their words, list them on the board or chart paper. Explain that they are going to use these words to help them remember the most important information they learned from the reading. Model how to reread the list, think about the meaning of the text, and use as many of the "important words" in a brief summary. Keep these summaries posted as a synthesis of the information your class has learned for future reference.

Either as a class discussions after the last day of reading or as a lesson unto itself, guide your students to look back at the food pyramid. "Do you still think we put all of the Hidden Villa food cards in the correct place on the food pyramid? Using what we know now about the components of food we eat, let's see if we can understand why nutritionists have designed the food pyramid this way. Why do you think Whole Grains forms the base of the pyramid?" Guide a discussion as you work your way up the pyramid. After supporting your students in thinking about the first pyramid level, you could have students think through the rest of the pyramid in groups, or continue as a class. At the end, you could have students write down these new discoveries in their notebooks or administer a nutrition quiz.

Talk with your students about the role of additives in our food. Compare together the ingredients of different foods that contain and do not contain additives (see download materials). Guide a class discussion about which one they think is healthier. Are the additives recognizable ingredients? You may want to share some information about the alarming research coming out that links many of these synthetic preservatives and colorings to hyperactive activity in children.

Part II: Nutrition Labels

They then use this information to compare the nutritional value of a variety of favorite snack foods. This series of lessons focuses on math standards as students take surveys, make bar graphs and write mathematical comparisons of different snack foods. Lessons 6-8 require an understanding of equivalent fractions or ratios and can be used to support 4th and 5th grade math standards in these areas. For younger students you may want to modify or skip these lessons. As a part of this series of lessons or as a conclusion I HIGHLY recommend that you guide your students through the Internet site: www.coolfoodplanet.org, which offers a fun, kid-friendly review of these nutrition basics and is "published" in a variety of languages. These lessons focus on math standards.

Lesson 1: Making favorite snack cards

Orientation: Tell students that they will focus their study on kids' favorite snacks.

Groups: The class produces a list of at least 15 specific foods they think are the favorite snacks of the kids at their school. Students write the name of each food along with a little sketch on one side of a card and write a quick list of information they already know about this food on the other side.

Share: Have each student share one of the foods they came up with and some of the information they know about this food. Students will have to pay close attention to what their classmates say so as not to repeat foods. Record their ideas on a class set of cards.

Orientation: Before students begin this lesson's activity, review with them the characteristics of an Eco-Healthy Lunch.

Groups: Students talk together to sort their snack-food cards into the categories: could and could not be part of an Eco-Healthy Lunch. Remind students that they need to discuss each decision together to make sure that they are clear about their reasoning. When they are done, they should record their sort in their notebook and include a justification for at least 2 snacks in each group.

Share: Ask for two volunteers (or assign students who would benefit from an occupation) to represent the two different categories. Hold up each snack-food card from the class set and ask students in which category it belongs. Take a quick poll and ask for 1 or 2 students to justify the decision. Hand the card to the student representing that category and, at the end, have each student read the stack of card s/he is holding.

Individual: Students could then be asked to write a reflection about the class discussion. What category did their favorite foods end up in? What do they think about that?

Orientation: From your list of favorite snacks, guide the class in choosing at least 6 snacks they think are the most popular among the students at your school. Introduce or review how to take a survey and use a tally table. Go over pertinent procedures, such as not asking the same person twice or influencing their decision. Model how to approach someone with their survey and have partners practice together.

Activity: Ask your colleagues if you can send pairs of students into their classrooms 5 minutes before recess or lunch to take a class survey OR equip your students with class lists and give them the task of hunting down as many survey respondents as possible. (This avoids the problem of double counting and has the added benefit of keeping students positively engaged during their free time. Most students are excited by the activity and do not complain about the use of their time.)

Orientation: Create a big tally table where all students can enter their survey data. Review how to use a tally table to create a bar graph.

Model: Demonstrate the first steps in making a bar table as you think about what scale to use on the y-axis, where to draw in the axes and how to draw the bar for the first snack.

Supported or Individual: Students copy the first modeled steps as they create their own bar graph. Then they use the rest of the information in the class tally table to finish their bar graph.

Share: Invite students to help you complete the large class copy of the graph.

Model: Introduce or review how to use the bar graph to make mathematical comparisons.

Support: As a class, write a few comparisons as examples.

Individual: Students write their own comparisons. Older students can also write a summary of their procedures and a reflection about what their bar graphs shows.

You Will Need: Collect or ask students to bring in the packaging for the most popular snacks selected by the class. (Go to Download Materials to find sample nutrition labels.)

Orientation: Photocopy the nutritional label of one of the snacks onto an overhead transparency. Guide students in "reading" the label and using their background knowledge to figure out what it means. E.g. "Our snack, Hot Cheetos, contains 9 grams of fat in each serving. Hot Cheetos has 37 different ingredients. I only recognize 5 of those ingredients."

Groups: Assign a different snack to each group and have them write sentences that explain the information on their label. You could use a worksheet or sentence stems.

Share: Each group should show their snack to the class and explain what they found out about its nutritional value. Following the group presentations, guide a class discussion about their discoveries.

Orientation: Review the discussion from Lesson 5. Point out that there is a big reason why we cannot really compare the nutritional content of these snacks from the information they shared in the previous lesson. Invite them to consider why. Guide a discussion about serving size. Since the serving sizes are different, the nutritional information cannot really be compared.

Model: Review how to find equivalent fractions (see student worksheet). Explain that the information on a nutritional label is like a fraction or ratio. I.e. "It is saying that there are 5gs of protein in a serving size of 45g, which can be written 5/45g. If we want to find out how many grams of protein there would be in a serving size of 100g, we can use equivalent fractions to help us." With these large numbers your class will probably need to use calculators.

Support: Students use a clear and simple worksheet (Download Materials) to convert all of the information on the nutrition label of their assigned snack to amounts per 100grams.

Share: Create a large tally table so that groups can come up and fill in the information for their snack. When they are done, they can write a summary of procedures and a reflection on their findings in their notebooks.

Orientation: Point out that it is hard to really compare the nutritional value of all these snacks by just looking at the chart, which has so many numbers. Review, again, how to make a bar graph. Focus on how to choose a scale for the y-axis, as some groups may need to use a scale of 0.5 grams while others need increments of 50 milligrams.

Groups: Each group is assigned a different component of the nutritional information and instructed to make a comparison bar graph between the various snacks. (Graph possibilities: total calories, total fat, sodium, dietary fiber, sugar, protein, number of ingredients - for a real stretch you could also include converting the % of the essential vitamins and minerals). Assign each snack a particular color and establish the placement order of the snacks across the x-axis. This will help students to visually understand the completed graphs.

Orientation: Explain that each group will be presenting their graph. They will need to include:

1. A review of the nutritional value of their food component (refer to the texts they read together during RT for assistance).
2. At least 3 mathematical comparisons using the information on their graph.
3. Their recommendation to other kids based on their findings.

Groups: Students work together to figure out the information needed for their presentations and then to practice what each will say.

Share: Each group gives its presentation. Guide a class discussion about what they learned and questions they still have.

Here is an example of what the group assigned to the food component "fat" might say in their presentation:

1. Fat is an important component of our food. Each gram of fat gives us 9 calories of energy, making it the most energy-packed component of our food. Our bodies use fats in many ways. They are an important part of cell walls and make the nerves in our brain work. Fat also protects important organs from injury. However, eating too much fat can cause serious damage to our health. Gaining too much weight can make our heart work too hard and bad fats can clog-up our blood veins.
2. From our graph you can see that Hot Cheetos has the most fat of all the snacks with a total of 35 grams in a 100-gram serving size. Hot Cheetos has twice as much fat as graham crackers. Both pretzels and whole wheat crackers have the same amount of fat- 2 grams in a 100-gram serving size.
3. From our graph it is obvious to use that we should not be eating Hot Cheetos. Instead, we would recommend that kids eat snacks lower in fat, like fresh fruit, pretzels or graham crackers.
   
   
   

Part III: Health Risk

• Guide your students in a Shared Reading and Reciprocal Teaching texts about these topics. Articles at the elementary school level abound on the Internet. You may also be able to find appropriate texts in your school library or local health provider's office.
• Arrange for a presentation by a local health provider, such as the school nurse, the community outreach department of a local health organization, or a parent who is a doctor or nurse.
• Carefully choose a few scenes from the educational version of the documentary "Super Size Me" and lead class discussions and journal reflections about the information presented.
• Have your students ask their parents about different health risks.
• Many studies have linked synthetic preservatives and colorings in processed food to allergies that produce hyperactive behavior. Have your students look through the labels on their favorite snack foods for these dangerous additives. Guide a class discussion on their findings.

Part IV: Why Do We Eat This Junk, Anyway?

• Guide your students through the most excellent Internet site for kids about this subject developed by PBS Kids, called "Don't Buy It!" (www.pbskids.org/dontbuyit/). Using this site could become a several-day series of lessons, particularly if you have access to a computer lab.
• Discuss how big companies pay tons of advertising money to convince consumers to buy their products. It is important to know how to “read” and understand these ads. Model “reading” a TV ad. Ask questions such as, "What does skateboarding have to do with yogurt? Who paid for this ad? How much does it cost? How healthy is it?" Talk about how ads always have a "hidden message" that often has little to do with the product. Have students try to analyze other TV ads using these questions.
• Bring in ads for the favorite snack food previously studied (sometimes these ads are right on the packaging!) and model how to "read" the advertisement's words, pictures and colors to figure out what the "hidden message" is.
• Again, the educational version of the documentary "Super Size Me" does a great job of addressing the issue of advertising. Have your students watch and discuss selected scenes.

Part V: Action

Ideally, at this point students want to do something with all that they have learned about nutrition. Ask your kids for ideas - you might be surprised by what they come up with. Here are a few suggestions:

• Plan an Eco-Healthy Lunch for another field trip or for a special school day.
• Using all of the techniques students learned about media literacy, have them design their own advertisements for healthy snacks to put up around the school.
• Write and produce a nutrition "public announcement" for the other kids at their school that can be read over the PA system or turned into a mini-video.
• Have a taste-testing session to compare the taste of whole grain products and refined grain products (brown rice vs. white rice, whole wheat bread vs. Wonder Bread etc) in the hopes to retrain students' taste buds.
• Use an interesting recipe for a week's Shared Reading and then take over the staff room to actually make the healthy meal or snack. Send the recipe home in case students want to teach their parents.
• Lobby the school district to include healthier options in the school lunch.
• Organize a field trip to the local farmer's market.

Download Materials

Lesson Materials

Part I

Lesson 3

Large copy of Nutritional pyramid

Lesson 4

RT Calories

Lesson 5

RT on Fats

RT on Carbohydrates

RT on Protein

RT on Minerals

RT on Vitamins

RT on TV's influence

Lesson 6

Large copy of Nutritional pyramid

Part II

Lesson 5

Transparency of food label for one favorite snack: juice, chips