Health Education in the Classroom
Making a difference in the health of your students can be done with fun classroom activities.
By Elisa Jackson
Health in America is a very big issue—and when I say big—I mean people are getting bigger. Therefore, it is important to teach students at a young age how to make healthy choices. Yes, you can teach them about the food pyramid, but unless you bring some real examples into the classroom, students may not understand how to choose healthier items over another item. Here are a few activities that I did in order to teach my students how to eat healthy.
Food Taste Test
Bring in a variety of foods like crackers, cheese, and fruit, and something processed which has a number of ingredients. Have students try the different foods and make a graph to show which things students preferred. Then have students look at the labels on the side of the box or container (you could make your own labels for the fruit), and have them discuss what was in each of the food items. What they should discover is that some of the foods, like the fruit, have nothing added, no preservatives, etc. This can lead to a discussion of what foods are "whole" and healthier for our bodies, and which aren't.
Counting the Points
In another lesson, students can analyze food items by looking at the sides of boxes and containers to determine the calorie count, fat content, sugar content, carbohydrate content, and fiber content of some popular student foods. They can then compare the different foods by looking at these things. Afterwards, you can talk about calories in versus calories out, and how many calories a body needs a day.
Food Journal
For this project, students take home a journal and write down exactly what they eat for three days. After the three days, students can discuss what they ate, and make suggestions for healthier alternatives if there are ones. For instance, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich becomes healthier if you have it on whole wheat bread, change regular peanut butter to 100% natural peanut butter, and instead of using jelly, cut up some strawberries or apples to put on top. You can even have a classroom feast using some healthy alternatives to show how a few changes can be tasty improvements.
I think the only way to really teach students how to eat healthy (or to do anything for that matter) is to give them real-world situations that they can relate to. These three lessons made an impact on my students. I saw many students start to bring healthier snacks once we had started our health unit! I hope you too can make an impact on the health of your students! Here are some more health and nutrition lessons.
Healthy Nutrition Lessons and Activities:
This is a health unit that contains eight lessons focused on teaching healthy habits to students. You could use some lessons from this unit to fit the health goals you are trying to achieve.
This lesson provides students with an understanding of how health can be affected by social class. There are four activities that help them look into the lives of people who make little money, and who make a lot of money and how their health is affected by economic status.
Students look at newspapers and analyze different health issues in the news today. They summarize the articles and come up with solutions to the health problems listed.
This is a graphic organizer that focuses on the food groups and gives students an opportunity to fill in foods that they like, and would like to try from each of the groups.