John M. Adamovich
Are healthy decisions made solely on the basis of fat content and not sugar?
Students will be given two columns to write down two meals from McDonalds. Students will need to use the website www.fastfoodnutrition.org to come up with the fattest meal choice imaginable. Students will then be asked to go back over their food choices and calculate out the amount of grams in the food item on a second worksheet. Students typically notice that the fattest food choices usually do not have the higher amount of sugar while the healthier (based off of fat) have a higher average of sugar content. This activity is done before teaching students of how sugar is processed into glucose and metabolized into fat if not burned off efficiently.
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Fattest Food Choices
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Grams of Fat (g.)
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Healthier food choices
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Grams of Fat (g.)
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Entree
Side
Drink
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Entrée
Side
Drink
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Entrée
Side
Drink
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Grams of Sugar (g.)
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Entrée
Side
Drink
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Grams of Sugar (g.)
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Prezi Presentation
Students in this activity will need Internet access. Students will be given a worksheet asking them to create an account on www.prezi.com, along with creating an account they must also answer several questions about the food they have chosen. Prezi is a website that is free for students to access as long as they possess a valid email address. This website will allow the students to create interactive powerpoint like presentations in which they may inform others of a specific topic of interest.
For the prezi presentation students will be able to choose a sugar substitute and compare and contrast its properties to that of natural sugar.
Criterion for the project is as followed: Description of what the sugar substitute is made up of, chemically, in comparison to natural sugar. What gives it the same taste, yet no caloric intake? The positive interactions it has on the body as well as the negative interaction it has to the body. Presentation of a prezi presentation by the teacher will be helpful for students to see what their presentations may look like as a finished product. This will also allow the teacher to become more informed with the lay out of the website and its functionality.
Along with a prezi presentation, students will also be asked to create a structural replica of the sugar substitute in its molecular state. Students will be given the opportunity to use the materials provided in class to create these structures using toothpicks and gumdrops. Students will be creating these structures off of the information they find within their research.
The goal of this assignment is to witness the ingredients used within certain foods while also visually seeing first hands its personal benefits as well as negative damages it may have on our bodies. This activity gets students excited about the foods they eat on a regular basis while also informing others of the added positives/negatives one may take away from sugar substitutes. Students are also able to work with technology and allowed to be creative, personalizing their presentations to strengthen the engagement of others in the class.
Sugar Tracker Activity
In this activity students will be able to visibly track their intake of sugar over the course of a week. Students will be able to do so by keeping track of all of the foods they eat on the worksheet template provided. Students will take the information tracked and use this information to research how much sugar was in the foods they ate.
Students will need to access the Internet via a computer or IPad for the second part of this activity. Students will find the informational fact labels and apply the information found to their worksheets. Some website the students may use are www.choosemyplate.org , and www.fastfoodnutrition.org in order to look up the nutritional values and the sugar content within the foods they had eaten.
Example of the template I use in my classroom for this activity:
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Foods Eaten
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Amount of the food you ate? (Per serving size)
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How much sugar was in this food? (g.)
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Breakfast
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Lunch
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Dinner
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Snacks
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* Maximum daily recommended daily value of sugar intake is 8 Tsp. for men and 6 Tsp. for women.
Total grams of Sugar/4= __________Tsp. of sugar
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Speed Dating Activity
(Make up an article worksheet to use for this activity) – find different levels of reading using spodify.
This activity is an informative way to have students read the information and share their findings with one another. Each student will get a brief one paragraph to one page article on sugar and its positive or negative affects on the body. With on minute given to each student, they will then be asked to share (in their own words) a description of what the article is about. Students listening may then ask the other student any questions they may have with the information presented. The second minute the roles will reverse and the presenter now will become the listener while the listener from the first minute will now present their findings. Once students are both done presenting the students sitting in the seats closest to the teacher will rotate allowing for a new partner setting to occur. This “speed dating” like atmosphere will happen several times. Once you have done three to four rotations students will be able to share out within a whole class discussion their findings as well as the information they were most shocked about along with any questions they generated throughout this activity.
Sugar vs. Artificial Sweeteners Essay
Is it healthier to drink coke or diet coke? I’m watching my weight so I should drink Powerade Zeros and vitamin water Zeros instead of the sugar soaked regular drinks, right? Are we the fattest nation? Where do we fail in comparison to other countries?
In the health classroom the topic of whole health is discussed every day. The debate on how our decisions are made and what influences us to make that decision weighs very heavily on the way in which companies promote these products.
In this activity students will be asked the questions, “Are artificial sweeteners safe?”
Students are given a rubric to follow for the paper. This rubric has been formatted across curriculums with two other sophomore teachers. This allows students to stay consistent throughout their classes writing processes.
Each of the five sections will be designed to focus on the several areas in which they would need to improve to stay on track for the following school year. There will be five sections each scored on a descending scale starting at four. Section one focus on the student’s thesis statements and introductions. Section two will be based on basic essay structure. Section three will be supporting paragraphs being used throughout the body of their papers to determine if each body paragraph has its own idea/purpose. Section four will be used to determine supportive reasoning, allowing students to cite other researchers work. Section five focused on their concluding paragraph. This allowed me to see if the student were able to restate the thesis statement while also giving a summative conclusion to the paper.
