Crecia C. Swaim
One day, I will take students to the technology center to explore nutrition labels. Santé Canada has an interactive guide to nutrition labels that will be used as a foundation from which to lead my own, more simplified explanation of the site. Each teacher will know the level of his or her own students, and so will best know how to modify the information on this site. I will show students the full page relating to what I will introduce while I introduce it. Then I will show a Power Point slide I created with excerpts from the first page, showing just the most basic and necessary words and information. I will rephrase complicated language and employ visual cues. Students will be given a printout of the Power Point slides with blanks to fill in during the lesson. I will in essence toggle back and forth between the original site and my simplified version of the information to assure student comprehension while still pushing them into the discomfort zone ever so slightly. The next day I will bring in a variety of nutrition labels; I will try to procure authentic labels, but if not, I will make some so that students can practice with them. I may have students complete a homework assignment in which they convert the nutrition label of something they eat often into French. Then we will use those labels for revisited practice later in the lesson. I will also print and use the nutrition information from the MacDonald's Canada website for practice.
Students will ask and answer questions concerning what foods they eat at particular meals. They will learn how to add
Qu'est-ce que
in front of a subject-verb combination to ask what a person does, in this case, what a person eats or likes. Students will have been keeping a food log for two weeks. This log will be the basis for these questions, and students will analyze their own data to create relevant data charts and graphs concerning their daily diet. We will also create a class graph from the information culled from classroom interviews. Students will analyze their graphs to make certain recommendations or goals for themselves.
I will again take students to the computer lab, and we will use a tool called
Menu au go—t de jour
provided on the
Diétistes de Canada
website. It is an interactive activity in which you choose a day's menu based on certain given choices. The site then analyzes your choices based on the nutritional guidelines recommended for the gender and age you provide. It gives short explanations and allows you the chance to revise your choices to get closer to the recommendations. There is an option to print your created menu, and I will have students do that before and after revisions. They will then write a paragraph explaining why they chose the items they did, and another explaining any revisions they made. Note: Be sure to address the different names for meals in French Canadian as opposed to Parisian French, i.e.
déjeuner
instead of
petit-déjeuner
,
dîner
instead of
déjeuner,
souper
instead of
dîner
, and
collation
instead of
go—ter
.
From the previously mentioned site, you may also link to a variety of recipes. I will print several out for another day's lesson. I will use the
Cuisine AZ
and the
Dari Couscous
website to find more recipes. Students will read recipes and highlight healthful ingredients in one color, and unhealthful ingredients in another. They will then compare recipes to decide which they should "make" and why.