Inquiry Project
TEMPLATE
Team member
Name: Julia Goodin
Name: Hope Vigren
Name: Jane Totaro
Topic: Health and Wellness
Part 1: Driving question:
What are your three initial driving questions?
1. In what ways can we encourage physical exercise in and out of the classroom?
2. What should schools do differently to encourage student to practice healthy eating habits, physical exercise, and avoid drugs?
3. What foods are necessary to maintain a well balanced diet and how can schools contribute to healthy eating?
What is your one, final driving question?
What should schools do differently to encourage student to practice healthy eating habits, physical exercise, and avoid drugs?
Background information of this driving question:
We are working with third graders. The standard that we are targeting is standard 3.2.4 which is “Discuss how the school can support personal health behaviors.” Physical education teachers can educate their students on all of these topics by making the lesson fun. The more fun the lesson the more likely the students will practice the healthy life lessons the teachers are teaching. For example, if the teacher is teaching the students to eat healthy, they could teach them recipes to healthy snacks and maybe even bring those snacks in for taste testing. Also, for physical exercise the teacher could find fun games for the kids to play in the gym, like basketball and incorporate exercising into the game. Lastly, when teaching the kids to avoid drugs I always found the DARE program very memorable so the schools should continue using their services. All of these lessons will be taught in the kids gym or health class, which is an hour long class every day.
Why do you think this is a good driving question?
Try to answer these 4 questions. (But you should not answer them with yes or no, instead explain the details and convince me that you’ve met these criteria)
Does the DQ warrant in-depth study?
This question invites an investigation into many questions within the topics mentioned. There are many subtopics that can be explored within this question including cafeteria options, physical education, the effect of technology, and education programs such as D.A.R.E.
Is the DQ an authentic and relevant issue/problem for my students?
Yes, the DQ is an authentic and relevant issue/problem for students. The obesity rate of children in the United States of America is 17%. This proves that many children are struggling to live a healthy lifestyle. School is where children spend the majority of their week and with influence from the school their lifestyles can be positively impacted.
Is there more than one plausible solution to the DQ?
As this question allows for many different investigations, there are many solutions that are available. Each subtopic that can be explored warrants a different solution.
Does the DQ provide opportunities for students to evaluate, analyze, present, and defend their solutions?
The DQ is very open ended and allows students to evaluate, analyze, present, and defend their solutions. There is not one definite answer to the DQ. Students will need to use their imagination and creative thinking skills to determine what schools need to do in order to encourage student to practice healthy eating habits, physical exercise, and avoid drugs.
Part2: Grabber
What is your grabber?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUmp67YDlHY
Why do you think this grabber is beneficial and how it align with your driving question?
Try to answer these questions. (But you should not answer them with yes or no, instead explain the details and convince me that you’ve met these criteria)
Does the story, article, video, announcement, role play, or other resource hook the learner into asking more questions about the topic?
Yes, it does a good job at kind of scaring the kids away from living an unhealthy life. This video will help engage the kids because after watching the video they will be encouraged to live a healthy lifestyle.
Does the grabber capitalize on novelty and / or high emotion situations?
The grabber has high emotion situations because it shows the obese man laying on a hospital bed reflecting on his life, thinking about all of the times that he could’ve changed his bad habits. This video will hopefully scare the kids away from unhealthy eating and attract them to nutritional food and physical activity.
Does the grabber establish authenticity & relevance?
Yes, it is a personal story and the man’s life proves how detrimental eating habits and exercise is to a person’s life. It is very good evidence. It is very relevant to the topic that the class will be taught.
Make sure to explain in detail how this grabber would be used.
This grabber will be used at the beginning of the lesson to engage the students to the topics and make them think about their lifestyles. The video might encourage the students to relate the topic to their own personal experiences. While the lesson is being taught to them they can relate it back to the video and think about how healthy lifestyles are a big deal.
Culminating activities: List all your activities here:
1) Activity 1
What is your first activity?
The teacher will have the students break up into groups or pairs as directed by the teacher. The groups will research two ways the man in the video could have improved his lifestyle at any point in his life. This gives the students freedom because they have a variety of ways they could take the project. After research, the students would put together a visual aid (ie. poster, powerpoint, drawing on the board, etc) to share their findings with the class. The main takeaway the students should have from this activity is the affects their choices have on their lives in the future.
Presentation: The students have a wide variety of options with this project which will maximize the relatability to the students real life. Though the project is wide open, the students should show they have done thorough research which has lead them to a conclusion to lead to a better lifestyle. They should show how their research connects both with the video and their life outside of the classroom. Every group member should participate in the presentation, and examples from the videos were used.
Why do you think this is a good activity for PBL?
Try to answer these 4 questions. (But you should not answer them with yes or no, instead explain the details and convince me that you’ve met these criteria)
How is the activity authentic?
This activity is authentic because it allows students to see how their choices now can affect their future. The video rewinds the man’s life back into childhood. This video and the research conducted will allow the students to see both healthy and unhealthy habits they can put into action in their day-to-day lives.
Does the activity provide students with the opportunity to present and defend problem solution?
Yes, the students will have the opportunity to observe the lifestyle of an unhealthy man, starting early on in his life, that ends up having a heart attack as a result of the way he lives. They will then be able to present ways in which the man could have prevented his heart attack to the class. There are many different ways in which he could have done this, therefore; students will be able to defend why they chose their suggestion over other possible ones.
Does the activity require student collaboration?
Yes, students will need to collaborate within the groups they have been assigned. In these groups they will need to communicate and work together well in order to properly collect research data and then determine a well organized and clear way to present their findings to the class.
How will I judge what students have learned from the activity?
You will need to create a rubric for this step and potential example materials as well. Also, at the end of the unit, we could check in with the students to see if any of the changes that were proposed have been made.
