Nutrition and Food: Taking Control of What You Eat

Overview:

This unit uses nutrition as a theme. Basic reading, writing and math activities are created based on the theme. You don’t have to be a scientist or a dietitian to use this unit. You will help your students reflect on what they know about food and nutrition, what they don’t know and what they want to learn. You can research along with your students using the resources suggested here. As always, technology resources are suggested here, but the lessons can still work, for the most part, in the low-tech classrooms.

Subject Matter

• All stages of the Writing Process, but especially the planning and pre-writing stages, Oral Language Skills, Critical Thinking. Research skills, especially Internet based.

Students will be able to:

• Formulate questions and research answers
  
• Write reflectively
  
• Research skills
  
• Writing about research
  
• Read charts (such as a food label)
  
• Use new vocabulary words

Standards

National Standards
These lessons are designed to help students obtain the skills they need to move ahead according to National Standards: The National Reporting System of Adult Education. These are the standards required by the 1998 Workforce Investment Act. See http://www.air.org/nrs/ for details.

Materials:

Research is a part of this unit. Resources for research need to be available for students. Internet resources are listed above. Useful print resources include:

Eating Right published by Signal Hill
Personal Health published by Steck-Vaughn
Decisions for Health published by Steck-Vaughn
In Good Health published by Contemporary
The Road to Healthy Living published by The University of Michigan Press
Getting Fit published by New Readers Press
TV411 in Print Issue no. 8

Students need paper, and pens or pencils.

Media Components

There’s a lot of interesting, interactive material on the Web. Here are a few sites that can help with the research parts of this lesson:

• http://health.yahoo.com/health/nutrition_fitness/
  Including a recipe search and daily features
  
  
• http://www.nutrition.gov/
  a guide to nutrition and health information on government Web sites
  
  
• http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/
  a food and nutrition information center
  
  
• http://www.healthyeatingclub.com/
  information, games and quizzes on healthy eating
  
  
• http://www.olen.com/food/
  a database on fast foods and their nutritional values
  
  
• http://ipl.sils.umich.edu/div/subject/browse/hea44.00.00/
  information and links from the Internet Public Library
  
  
• http://www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/food.htm
  a simple Web site about food, created for and by adult learners
  
  
• http://www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/cook.htm
  cookbooks put together by adult learners
  

Prep for Teachers

You don’t have to be an expert in nutrition to use this unit. In fact, it can be even better if you don’t know much at all. Then you get to research and learn along with your students.

For most of the activities here, you need some resources for getting information. If you have Internet access, finding information on nutrition is easy. Review the sites mentioned in this lesson to make sure they still work.

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