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CRLL topic: Food

Teaching unit: Let’s eat healthy!

Content objectives:

• Students will learn to identify what a healthy breakfast should contain.

• Students will learn to classify food according to its properties.

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Language objectives:

• Students will learn to give advice on food habits.

• Students will learn to describe food according to its properties.

 

Combined objectives:

• By the end of this unit students will be able to create a healthy breakfast and describe it in order to advise their classmates what they should eat in the morning.

• By the end of this unit students will also be able to label the properties that each type of food has and to classify different food according to its properties.

 

Description of the activity:

Students will create a healthy breakfast in order to give advice to their classmates on what the good food habits are, based on a model description of what a healthy breakfast should contain.

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Communicative goals:

Students will be given many opportunities to interact and speak throughout the lesson as it has been planned to be held as a class discussion. We will pose questions and encourage them to participate all the time and after the presentation, they will be asked to do the activity we have prepared, in which they will share their ideas, come to an agreement and explain to the rest why it is a healthy balanced breakfast.

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Strategies to help students understand and produce:

The whole lesson is designed to promote students interaction and collaboration. It is divided into three different parts to encourage students to participate, so it is constructed around a scaffolding technique including an activation phase, a presentation phase and a production phase.

The first part is the activation phase. Teachers start the lesson by asking students: “What do you usually have for breakfast?” in order to elicit different words related to food from the students. After that, teachers project the first slide of the GoogleSlides presentation showing different pictures of different meals. In order to bring students’ previous knowledge out, teachers need to ask students: “What can you see in the pictures?” Students mention as many words related to food as possible. Then teachers ask students: “What time of the day would you eat the meals that appear in the pictures?”, expecting “lunch” or “dinner”as an answer. Teachers ask one more question: “Where do people eat these meals?”. After having asked these questions teachers tell students they will watch a video that will answer these questions. Teachers play the video, and after that, they ask students again: “What meal do the pictures portray?”, expecting students to say “Breakfast!”; and “Where do people eat this meals?”, expecting students to say the answers they will have just seen in the video (Korea, Brazil, Finland, Vietnam, Poland and The Netherlands). Teachers project slide two in order to check the answers.

Once the answers are checked, the second phase begins. This second phase is the presentation phase. Teachers present slide 3 or the presentation and tell students what a healthy breakfast should contain (50% of fruits and vegetables, 25% or protein and 25% of carbohydrates). Teachers use the visual support of the presentation to help their explanations, linking a meal with the different elements of the food pyramid projected on the whiteboard. Teachers also offer students opportunities for clarification by asking questions such as: “What kinds of food contain carbohydrates or protein?”. Then teachers project a table with data about what students eat at home for breakfast and what students eat at school for breakfast (slide 4). Teachers make students reflect about the data projected in the table by asking questions like “Is it healthy what you eat for breakfast?” “Is it good not to eat breakfast at home before coming to school?”. Once students answer the questions, teachers show them the facts: “Why SHOULD they eat breakfast?”. Teachers explain slide 5 to students.

When teachers finish explaining why they should eat breakfast, phase 3 begins. Phase 3 is the production phase. Teachers project slide 6 and tell students they need to join in groups of 4 people, think what a healthy breakfast SHOULD include, create their ideal healthy breakfast and finally advise their classmates on what they SHOULD eat in the mornings before coming to school. In order for them to create good healthy breakfast menus, teachers project slide 7 on the whiteboard while students start working on their creations. Once they finish writing their healthy breakfast menus, teachers ask students to present what their group decided a healthy breakfast SHOULD contain. Lastly, teachers go through the different menus students created in order to make them reflect about what they have produced: “Was their healthy breakfast containing the right amount of protein, carbohydrates and fruits or vegetables?” If not, “What SHOULD they include?” “What SHOULD they avoid eating in large quantities?” Reflecting on what they will have done will prove whether or not the contents and the language have been acquired and what will need to be improved.

 

Language needs of the activity:

Terms: carbohydrates, carbs, proteins, food groups, dairy, fruits, vegetables, nutrients, red meat, poultry, scrambled eggs, sprinkled chocolate, to squeeze, freshly squeezed orange juice, to feel peckish, to feel the munchies, to nibble,  to warm up a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, cocoa powder, sugar, sugar levels, performance, school results, concentration, short-term memory.

Grammar structures:

A healthy breakfast SHOULD contain/include…

You SHOULD have breakfast in the morning because…

Classroom language: Are there any volunteers, please? It’s your turn to work!, Thank you!, Good!, Great!, Excelent!, Are you sure? Consider it again, please. What should you do to improve the results?  

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Reflection after implementation I:

Although it worked overall fine, time constraints were an issue, so that we did not overlap with the other teacher, who needed some time in the same class to review the exam content for the following class.

We tried to keep it simple, so that they could understand the food groups as well as identify and classify basic foods. The main intention was that by not giving them too much information on nutrition itself, only some basic terms, they could produce later on a suggestion with some nutritional facts. It seemed to work better thanks to the visual aid of the slides and images. They understood the classification, but some ingredients such as bacon and doughnut easily came up as possible combinations, when actually they should be avoided, but because of the time pressure we forgot to mention it although it was included in our notes.

Initial activation was essential for them when it came to warm up and get into the topic. Surprisingly enough, they all produced their breakfast models, they picked up the vocabulary and basic structure, but also tried to keep it very attached the language pattern provided.

When presenting, they were mostly reading the notes they had taken and hardly no spontaneous interaction occurred. Whenever they missed out a part, we asked them questions to make them realise it. This specially happened with the reasons why it was good to have breakfast, and all of them gave the same one, which was that their breakfast was good and healthy because it contained all the properties (proteins, carbohydrates and fruit or vegetables). Only when asked again to give a new reason, they actually tried to think of something else. We found no blocking or stoppers to the activity, but some students did not follow in English and asked their classmates in Spanish to translate for them. In those cases, we approached and spoke more slowly and repeat as necessary, and in a few cases, for certain words, use even Spanish. We also tried to acknowledge any good participation they had to motivate them and it seemed to work with the group as a whole. Playing the video was a key icebreaker in the session, and they all had a laughed, which relaxed the environment a lot. However, although we pointed out some vocabulary before playing it, some of what was said was not understood, although the context was pretty clear for them. Maybe subtitling it would have been a good option. Their teacher was admittedly happy with the session and has even invited us to repeat it throughout the rest of classes!

 

Reflection after implementation II (not recorded):

The activity was also implemented (but not recorded) in Institut Baix Camp with two groups of 3rd of ESO students. As my mentor was developing a unit about “FOOD” I asked her if I could implement the activity we designed with the 3rd of ESO group.

I had a whole hour to implement the session with the groups (Wednesday from 12:00 to 13:00 and Thursday from 8:30 to 9:30). It worked quite well. At the beginning of the class they were excited when I asked questions to activate their knowledge. Students were eliciting a lot of vocabulary in the activation phase, and students who got a higher English level translated some words other students could not understand. They also liked a lot  the video of the American kids eating breakfasts from all around the world; and they easily recognized the countries the breakfasts belonged to.

The “worst” part of the lesson was the presentation phase, their faces spoke to me: “Why is she telling us what we should eat for breakfast?” “She is not our mum to tell us what they need to eat”. Even though they looked at me like this, they participated and produced what I asked them to produce. They used SHOULD to present their healthy breakfasts to the class, and they were able to identify the properties of the different kinds of food they used in their healthy breakfast menus.

When I had to group them I tried to mix students with high and low levels, so that the ones having a lower level could contribute to the group with ideas and the ones having a higher level could be in charge of writing their healthy breakfast menus.

When they presented their healthy breakfast menus, most of them were reading their notes. Another member of the group wrote their healthy breakfast menu on the whiteboard. When all groups finished presenting we went through all their menus, revising whether or not they were containing the right amounts of proteins, carbohydrates and fruits or vegetables. They reflected on their errors, and they advised each other on what they SHOULD to change in order to obtain a healthy breakfast.

The lesson worked well, and both, language and content objectives were developed. Maybe next time I should give them more time to reflect on why it is important to eat breakfast, or I should give them more time to assimilate the information I present. I’m still learning, and sometimes I am a bit too anxious to get students’ answers back or I expect them to get things very fast.  I have to consider that not all students have the same abilities and need more time to “absorb” information in order to be productive in later phases.

 

Teaching materials:

Recorded activity

Google Slides presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XbFB01E5LgL8UEJCXFGM4yCpO_u0YwY1G84YHC8wkSI/edit?ts=58bdb77a#slide=id.p

YouTube video:  American Kids Try Breakfasts From Around the World | Ep 1