What's Your Pyramid?

A Telecollaboration Lesson for
4th-6th Grades (Health)

Designed by Dawn Batzler, Angela Hernandez, and Bernadette Minuto

Introduction

This lesson was developed as part of the requirements for EDTEC 570, Advanced Teaching with Technology. This lesson will be geared toward teaching upper elementary students how to use the Food Pyramid as a guide for making healthy eating choices.

In this lesson, your students will collaborate with other students from either Canada or Mexico to investigate healthy diets and their relation to the country's food guide. Students will track their diets in a daily food log, and compare it to government guidelines. As a result, students will determine whether they should make changes to their diet. Students will exchange suggestions for improvements in each other's diet. Students will conclude the lesson with a PowerPoint presentation highlighting their findings.

Learners

This lesson is anchored in the elementary intermediate grades in the subject of Health and involves Language Arts and Math to a lesser extent. The Health standards the lesson is centered upon are related to fourth through sixth grades. This lesson could be extended to higher grade levels by incorporating data analysis using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to calculate exact caloric intake, or creating individual diet and exercise plans.

Learners embarking on this lesson must practice basic word processing skills, and have worked a bit with the Microsoft PowerPoint application. It would also benefit the student to have had some presentations skills and experience with presenting with technology.

Curriculum Standards

Students will touch upon the following standards from Expectation 1 of the California Health Framework for grades four through six:

Expectation 1: Students will demonstrate ways in which they can enhance and maintain their health and well-being.

Students will:

• Establish and maintain healthy eating practices
• Make healthy food choices.
• Prepare a variety of healthy foods.
• Analyze influences on food choices.
• Practice kitchen safety.

Math

National Standard, Grades 6-8: Students will be able to understand both metric and customary systems of measurement.

CA Standard 2.1: Convert one unit of measurement to another (e.g. from feet to miles, from centimeters to inches).

Language Arts

CA Standard 1.3: Use a variety of effective and coherent organizational patterns, including comparison and contrast; organization by categories; and arrangement by spatial order, order of importance, or climactic order.

In addition to the objectives listed above, students will demonstrate competency in the following higher level thinking skills: compare and contrast, fostering team building, and oral presentation skills.

Partners

To complete our objectives, we will need to communicate with a cooperating school from another country. Students can choose to collaborate with another class from either Canada or Mexico. The collaborating students should be in the same grade level (grades four through six). In groups of 3-4, students will locate partners through ePals, a web-based tool that connects students with their peers worldwide through email. Each group will choose one country, and each student will communicate with their own individual partner from that country. Students will combine the data they have compiled in their groups to produce a final presentation for the class.

Process

This lesson is based on the Keypals, Global Classrooms, Information Exchange Activity Structure and the Correspond, Collect, Share and Compare, and Collaborate Action Sequences as described by Judi Harris.

This lesson is intended to be taught over the course of 1-2 weeks, during a period of one hour per day.

Prior to beginning this lesson, students should have had opportunities to develop basic skill mastery in word processing, email use and etiquette, and the Microsoft PowerPoint application. The week immediately prior to the start of this lesson, students will keep a daily log of food intake at each meal. The log will be shared with the students' ePals the following week.

NOTE: In the case that there are not an equal number of students, the students can easily double or triple-up with one ePal. Final presentations only require analysis of one diet.

Variations

After presentations are given, one day may be used as a recipe sharing activity. Students make a chosen recipe from their ePal's country and share it with the class.

Resources Needed

• High Speed Internet Access
• E-mail accounts for all students, ePals
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• At least one computer per three students, on a rotating schedule
• Student writing journals for food log

Websites

• USDA Food Pyramid
• Latin American Food Pyramid
• Canadian Food Rainbow
• ePals

Human Resources

Since students will need to keep consistent and accurate track of food intake, parent involvement is recommended. Instructional aides and parents, if available, would be a great resource to students while working on computers.

Evaluation

The lesson culminates in a PowerPoint presentation based on an analysis of one team member's findings which should include the following requirements:

• Food Pyramid Comparison
• U.S. Student's diet compared with U.S.D.A. Food Pyramid
• Foreign Student's diet compared with their country's Food Guidelines
• Recommendations for ePal's diet
• OPTIONAL: Recipe for an interesting dish from ePal's country.

The overall presentation should be evaluated using the following four-point rubric:

Credits & References

Food Guide image on this page courtesy of Google Images and n101.com

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