Crecia C. Swaim
In this unit I will build on students' prior knowledge of basic food items, taught in sixth grade, by increasing the variety of food items learned. I will teach vocabulary related to meals, including the categories of breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, beverages, and desserts, as well as names of common meals and food items. I will canvass students to find out their favorite and most often eaten meals, in order to tailor vocabulary to suit their needs. Students will survey each other to find out the same information through oral practice. They will compile this survey information in a columned graphic organizer, which they will then use as a reference to answer questions about different members of the class; these activities will get students conversing with several different forms of given verbs (i.e. I like, he likes, they like, we all like, does she like, etc.)
Students will consult resources to discover basic nutritional information for many foods. They will choose the foods they research, so that their learning will be more meaningful to them. They will, however, be required to research at least ten fruits and ten vegetables, to broaden their taste horizons and to encourage trying new items. I want them to determine for themselves the virtues and hazards of the foods they eat, so that the information might stick with them long after the unit has been taught, and might cause them to make some different choices along the way. Also, during all the paired and whole class speaking activities using researched vocabulary, students will get exposed to many food items other than those they researched themselves, so their learning will be layered.
We will classify items by color, as that will help students to recycle vocabulary while using what they know to help build new knowledge. I will introduce the idea of eating by color (manger de couleur) to help convey the nutritional benefits of eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
Then I will teach students the basic components of a healthy diet, and we will discuss the idea of a balanced meal and a balanced diet. I will introduce the definition of a calorie, and discuss the idea of quantity and quality of food in being directly related to the energy a person has and the condition of the body, in terms of weight as well as things like skin and hair condition. Students will then apply their knowledge of nutritional data to compare and contrast items in terms of different dietary elements, like calories, fats, proteins, simple and complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. The basic function of each element will be introduced, so that students will understand the concept of moderation, that some of these elements are okay or even vital in certain quantities to help our bodies in various ways. We will make comparisons among our charts to get at the differences between high empty calorie and high nutritionally-dense calorie items. Students will categorize vocabulary according to meal, color, calorie, and nutrients. I will have students keep a food log for two weeks and analyze their intake of the above-mentioned categories.
We will then practice combining foods into calorie- and health-conscious meals, considering all the elements of diet we explored above. One way I intend to differentiate for higher-achieving students is to expect them to know and use the details of the nutritional breakdown of more foods more frequently and fluidly than other students. We will look at dietary guidelines from Canada and then France to compare and contrast them to our own and to each other. One possible enrichment activity will be to look at the objectives of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, (La Communauté Economique Des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, CEDEO) to show that although not every country currently has dietary guidelines in place, there are different needs that must be addressed in different places. For instance, in largely Francophone western Africa, they are currently discussing the "double burden of malnutrition/le double fardeau de la malnutrition." This addresses the high infant mortality rate due to malnutrition as well as the chronic diseases that affect adults who were raised malnourished. Additionally, there has been a dramatic increase in overnourishment and obesity amongst adults in these countries. It is estimated that the number of obese people living in that region of Africa will double in the next five years (OOAS). The possibility of a link between malnutrition and obesity could also be explored.
We will look at different recipes to determine what is and is not healthful about each recipe. Although we will begin with recipes for foods students are familiar with, we will progress to recipes for traditional French foods as a window into culture. I will choose recipes from different regions of France as a way to introduce more French geography as well as information about the relationship between agricultural conditions and local cuisine.
Numeracy is woven throughout the unit in terms of nutritional counts, serving sizes, recipe measurements, calorie counts, quantity of foods per serving, and comparison among foods of all these pieces as well as comparing and contrasting measurements according to country.
French language health and nutrition documents from France and Canada will be used as primary resources for health information. In particular, Canada's nutritional guidelines can be explored and downloaded at the website for Santé Canada/Health Canada. Click on
Obtenez votre exemplaire
and then
Téléchargez le Guide en PDF.
This website can be used in a myriad of ways, only some of which will be documented in this unit. It is an invaluable resource, existing in both French and English, for language exploration. French nutritional guidelines can be found on the Programme National Nutrition Santé (PNNS) website.
I like to feature video segments in my units whenever possible, and the following are two examples of what could be used. There is a clip in the film
Keita: L'héritage du griot
in which an urban family in Burkina Faso prepares and eats dinner with a traditional griot guest. They discuss eating pasta as opposed to traditional Burkinabe food, and the griot eats with his hands. It is a great way to discuss different foods for different cultures and agricultures, as well as different dining practices. There are also some clips in François Truffaut's
Argent de Poche
that revolve around children preparing food, notably a) two boys preparing breakfast while their parents sleep in on the weekend, and b) neighbors gathering dinner food to send to a little girl they think was shut in without supper. I showed the seventh grade class this film this year, and they loved those parts. They could be shown to illustrate simple vocabulary or to discuss personal mealtime practices. Additionally, French food product commercials can be ordered from language teacher catalogs or downloaded from web sites like www.youtube.com.