Week 14

Over the past week, I have been spending much of my time teaching health education to grades 1^st through 8^th grade. The school administration decided to choose their heath education time focusing specifically on a nutrition unit. Since I have been teaching health education, I have learned a few things that are a bit different since I have been in a gym.

I decided that I wanted to focus on the food plate and goals with the lower grades and nutrition labels for the upper grades. Connecting with IPTS one, I wanted to be sure that I chose central concepts and methods that would be most meaningful to all students.   My main objective was to teach students something new; I did not want time lost re-teaching students something that they have learned previously in their science classes. I made sure to bring in visuals and discuss realistic issues regarding nutrition with the lower grade students. I created a work sheet, which was a fill in the blank sheet. I wanted students to create realistic goals, which included trying new food that they never tried before and illustrating a “perfect dinner.” When asking students to list foods in the different food plate categories, I only wanted students to list veggies, fruits, and grains that they actually liked to eat. I knew that they knew that spinach, broccoli, and peas were vegetables, but I wanted to focus on creating new goals that were realistic for these students to be eating at home. It seemed that students did enjoy the activities that were planned for their nutrition unit.

For the upper grades I decided to use the nutrition labels. I am continuing to get a ton of questions from my students about the food labels. I focused this week on trying to be as realistic as I could with nutrition. I know that students do not do the grocery shopping, but I challenged students to go to the grocery store with their mom or dad to help educate their parents on what they are learning at school and begin to start on the right track to eating healthy. Having students create goals for healthy eating I told student to share those goals with their parents. My hope is that parents will see their children want to begin eating healthy and in turn they may see that they can make a few small changes to be a little healthier by changing their diet. Using the nutrition labels, I also expanded by talking about how many foods are marketed. Even though foods say they are “health,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are. Also, I brought in the book “Eat This Not That” By David Zinczenko. I used this book because it has many popular chain restaurants that the students tend to eat at. I know that students will continue to eat tat Wendy’s, McDonalds, and Burger King, so I wanted to at least share with students what are some of the healthier choices they can make at the popular fast food chain restaurants. Using the book also grabbed the attention of students when they were surprised that a Big Mac from McDonalds was fewer calories than a Whopper with cheese at Burger King. Highlighting these restaurants and their foods made the nutrition unit more realistic to what middle grade students are interested in eating.

Aside from the health education, the bowling unit has been going really well. I was surprised to see how well students were growing from week one to week two. I feel that I have given a variety of instructional strategies that encourage the student’s development in the bowling unit with skills, vocabulary, and knowledge of the game, IPTS six. To make it easier, especially for younger students to remember the correct fingers for bowling, I introduced it as Spiderman fingers (the fingers used to spread the web) and rock star fingers were another easy way for students to remember the correct fingers for holding the bowling ball. Having a bowling word list and a visual of the correct positioning of the bowling pins has really created an learning environment where students have become more independent. I asked students to use the terms on the list to become more familiar with the terminology used in the sport of bowling. Next week, I am going to start having students keep score of their bowing game in order to understand scoring of the game.

I am looking forward to the week ahead to complete my final observation as well as begin to phase out of full time teaching. I am getting very excited for graduation, and it has been great to see the development and growth of my students and myself.