Miss Michaela's Inquiry Project

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Michaela Barber

INQUIRY PROJECT W200

Michaela Barber and Madeline Daily

Unit: Health and Wellness in Food

Persistent Issue: Health and choice for students in the lunchroom.

Central Question: What kind of lunch menu is best for students?

Lesson 1: Grabber and Introduction

One hour in class

Standards Covered:

2.1.1 Identify that healthy behaviors affect personal health. Example: Describe that exercising, healthy eating, and being tobacco free

can help keep the body strong and healthy.

2.1.2 Recognize that there are multiple dimensions of health.

Example: Identify the dimensions of health as physical, mental and

social.

Introductory Grabber: Instructor begins by giving students the opportunity to pick 3 snacks that they would like to have brought into class. The catch is that once the students have all decided, the class as a whole will vote what TWO would be the best. This is to get students thinking about their own preferences, decision making, and definition of best. Students are then instructed to identify and argue why their preferred snack is the best snack. (Is it healthy? Does it taste good? Does it look nice? Is it filling? etc). The class then comes together and proposes some of their arguments. After this, the instructor asks the class what if they could do this for the entire lunch menu at school?

Introduce the Central Question: Expand on what students would do if they could design a lunch menu for their school. Reintroduce different ways a food could be “better” than another.

Culminating Activity

Design a Lunch Menu Activity

The structure for this activity is a group project that allows students to think critically about what they are eating. Three-five hour long portions of class.

Introduction:When students enter the classroom after specials the desks have been set up in groups, and students' names are placed on the desks in which they are to sit. The instructor explains that students will work together to make the best lunch menu. Students talk about favorite food and WHY they are their favorite. What do they like about their favorite food, what makes it special or unique.

Field Trip to the Lunch Room/Lecture: After setting up a time with the cafeteria workers, students will take a tour of the lunch room and where they serve the food. Students will have the opportunity to talk about and ask questions with a few of the cafeteria workers about what food is served on which day and ask which the workers think are “the best”. After this, the class will come back to the classroom and watch a presentation/listen to a lecture on different meals and what makes a full meal. Students will participate in a discussion after the lecture/presentation giving ideas or opinions about the current lunch program.

Children will watch one of the following videos and discuss what they mean. Teacher will ask:

https://youtu.be/1Jj-9f8Yj8g

https://youtu.be/5iS8h0J_Ows

https://youtu.be/KIl3A4zbTfI

Explain these videos.
What is happening?
Which video did you like the most and why?
What is one thing you learned from a video?

Activity Overview: Cohesively, students will work together to form one solution that contains 3 new sides, and 2 new entrees. Students should examine all parts of the food including healthiness and price. These new foods should help the students be healthier while satisfying their taste buds. If necessary students may conduct surveys or research on classroom computers.

Below are some websites that students may use to conduct research:

https://www.choosemyplate.gov/

http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/

https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/MyPlate

Presentation: Students will illustrate their new and improved menus on a poster sized paper and be prepared to present their poster and argue their menu decisions to the class. The presentation should be five minutes maximum, each student in the group must help with the explanation of their new menu. Students must include Venn Diagrams to show the current and new lunch menu and what they would keep/change in the school lunch menu.

Debriefing/Final Discussion/Wrap-up: Following the presentations, students take time to think about each presentation and vote on their top 3 lunch menus. The winning group informs the rest of the class and gets them on board. Discuss the costs and all of the details about each food. Talk about which food we would decide to eliminate from the current lunch menu to replace with this new food. As a class we have teams that research, poll the school, create the presentation, a group of presenters. We invite the principal, cafeteria workers, school nutritionist and other school officials who might have an impact on this potential change.

Rubric:

	Does not have information	Has the information	Has information well	Scale of 1-3	TeacherNotes
Explanation	Has little to no information on the lunch menu.	Has facts and details to support their lunch menu, but some parts are confusing and irrelevant.	Has appropriate facts and descriptive details to support their lunch menu.	123
Organization	Students need to work on the order in which they present the information.	Students need to work on organization and make sure they review the information before in order for it to make sense.	Students are well organized and every aspect of the project is organized.	123
Presentation	Students do not have the Venn Diagram or the poster completed.	Students have the Venn Diagram and poster but it is not completed or cluttered.	Students have Venn Diagram and poster and it is coherent.	123
Discussion	Does not answer audiences’ questions	Is able to answer some but not all questions about the lunch menu well.	Students answer all questions thoroughly and thoughtfully	123
Participation	All team members do not participate	Student participates some but not equally.	All team members participate equally and for about the same amount of time.	123

PBL Artifact Template

THE FOLLOWING FOR CRITERIA ARE TO BE USED TO GUIDE YOUR FINAL DOCUMENT

1) Driving Question (12.5 points)

Does the DQ warrant in-depth study?
Is the DQ an authentic and relevant issue/problem for my students?
Is there more than one plausible solution to the DQ?
Does the DQ provide opportunities for students to evaluate, analyze, present, and defend their solutions? - Provide a brief introduction to your question as well

Design a better lunch menu for our school!

The question for students to create their own idea of what the lunch menu for school helps them realize the benefits of certain foods and allows for open thought and perhaps even know ideas that could be taken seriously to improve the current menu!

Getting the students engaged in this should be fairly easy just by telling them that they could actually change something in their school for not just themselves, but all of their classmates.

2) Grabber (22.5 points)

Does the story, article, video, announcement, or role play other resource hook the learner into asking more questions about the topic?
Does the grabber capitalize on novelty and / or high emotion situations?
Does the grabber establish authenticity & relevance?
Make sure to explain how this grabber would be used.

Either have an activity where students pick what snacks the teacher bring in as a reward and ask how would you feel if you could do this for lunch?

Or some sort of silly role play …? *BRAINSTORM ON THIS*

3) Culminating Activity (65 points)

How is the activity authentic?
Does the activity provide students with the opportunity to present and defend problem solution?
Does the activity require student collaboration?
How will I judge what students have learned from the activity?

You will likely need to create a rubric for this step and example materials.

Have students study portion sizes, food pyramid (myplate).

The actual activity will differ a bit depending on the students’ interpretation of the word “better”. Will it be healthier? Tastier? More colorful? Random? A full meal? Who knows! It changes due to each child’s perspective!

Submission:

We will be sharing our plans through OER commons so that other teachers can benefit from the excellent ideas that you have developed here. Only one student per group needs to create an account, but you should work on the following steps together.

Go to OER Commons
Click Register at the top right.
After you register, make sure you verify your email address.
Click on Create at the top right.
Click on Open Author
Write a short introduction at the top (and include any standards you are addressing)
Paste in your Driving Question, Grabber, and Culminating activity.
Complete the fields on the Describe tab.
Submit your work.
Add the link to your OER resource on the Class Materials Page of your Teacher Website.