I. Curricular Framework

Concept:

Wellness

Essential Question:

What role do farmers play in helping us eat healthy?

Bridge:

Farmer’s Market Lunch

Content:

Farm Produce and Good Nutrition

Outcomes:

II. Standards Aligned

III. Instruction and Assessment

1. Connect: Connecting to the Concept Experientially

Objective: To stimulate an interest in the various produce provided by farms. To connect to what they already know about farm produce.

Activity: Class visits a local farmers' market talking to the farmers and purchasing produce, fruits and vegetables, to be used in classroom. Teacher takes Polaroid pictures of food stalls and children and farmers interacting.

Assessment: Level of interest as determined by comments and questions asked by the children and enthusiasm of children as they explore the various farmer's stalls.

2. Attend: Attending to the Connection

Objective: To discuss what they experienced at the farmers' market.

Activity: Teacher leads discussion of visit to farmers' market using a language experience or picture chart. They discuss sights, smells, sounds, feelings about the visit.

Assessment: Level of participation, quality of responses, individual student interest in sharing and listening to others, level of language development.

Assessment, Phase One, Level of Engagement, Fascination:

3. Image: Creating a Mental Picture

Objective: To connect the farmers' market experience to concepts of farm produce and proper nutrition.

Activity: Children examine the fruits and vegetables purchased at the farm and discuss the size, shape, color, texture of each (concept of matter). They categorize fruits and vegetables using various attributes. They make bar graphs indicating favorite vegetables and fruits. They use their produce to prepare their lunch: vegetable soup, fruit pieces, peanut butter sandwiches, and milk. Photos taken at farmers' market and during preparation of lunch are posted on bulletin board.

Assessment: Level of familiarity with the names of various fruits and vegetables, ability to sort the produce by various attributes; the understanding of a bar graph to show results of polls; interest in and level development of fine motor skills needed to prepare lunch; enthusiasm for eating their prepared lunch.

Assessment, Phase Two, Seeing the Big Picture:

4. Inform: Receiving Facts & Knowledge

Objective: To develop the concepts of farm produce and proper nutrition.

Activity: Teacher reads aloud to the children, shows filmstrips and videos to develop the concept of proper nutrition using the food group pyramid. Compare produce used in preparing lunch to food pyramid and determine if nutritious. Analyze school lunches over several days to determine if nutritious when compared to food pyramid.

Assessment: Number of correct responses to questions asked during and at end of each activity. Attentiveness of the children. Selections children make at lunch time.

Assessment, Phase Three, Success with Acquiring Knowledge:

5. Practice: Developing Skills

Objective: To provide hands-on opportunities for children to experience/extend what they learned in Step 4.

Activity:
Centers: Listening, book nook, writing, math. Listening: Listen to books-on-tape about foods: Grandfather's Cake, The Man Who Cooked for Himself, Let's Eat, Little Red Hen; Listen to songs--The Breakfast Song, Ten Green Apples. Book Nook: Read books and magazines about various types of food and nutrition, e.g., The Berenstein Bears, Pancakes, Crackers, and Pizza, From Apple Seed to Applesauce, Stone Soup.
Writing Center: Draw pictures and write/dictate a description of favorite foods; match words to pictures of foods or artificial foods--record these on paper; use My First Dictionary to look up vocabulary words, e.g., vegetable, rice, fruit, banana, write labels or sentence strips for Polaroid pictures on bulletin board.
Math: Graph favorite breakfast foods; using egg cartons, match numeral with correct number of beans; sort artificial foods by various attributes; use pretzel sticks for addition and subtraction problems; complete math worksheets.

Assessment: Quality of involvement in centers and quality of student work.

Assessment, Phase Four, Success with Acquiring Skills:

6. Extend: Extending Learning to the Outside World

Objective: To provide hands-on opportunities for children to experience/extend what they learned in Step 4.

Activity:
Centers: Discovery, Blocks, Housekeeping, Sand & Water, Art.
Discovery: Each child contributes to Favorite Foods Mural by cutting two favorite foods from magazines and pasting them onto mural; using paper plate, the children select nutritious foods for their plate from a series of pictures of nutritious foods and junk foods; dry some fruits to be eaten later; plant a garden at school (concepts of plant growth and needs). Sand/Water: Float plastic foods in the water; play in sand pretending to plant crops.
Art: Show several still life art prints--children become artists arranging fruits and vegetables and then painting own pictures of a still life which are framed in black poster frames and displayed in room and hall; make potato prints (concept of patterning); make necklaces using different shapes and colors of pasta.
Blocks: Build a farmers' market with all the stalls and surrounding buildings; build a grocery store.
Housekeeping: Set up as a grocery store and sort can goods and artificial produce on shelves and role play being a storekeeper.

Assessment: Quality and accuracy of work products; level of participation at each center; ability to follow directions and complete assigned work.

7. Refine: Refining the Extension

Objective: To use knowledge and skills gained to plan and prepare a picnic to be shared with upper grade buddies.

Activity: The children will plan a nutritious picnic. Working in cooperative groups they will prepare the food, package the food, write and send invitations to their buddies asking them to join them for a picnic on the school grounds or in a nearby park (concept of division of labor).

Assessment: The selection of nutritious foods for the picnic rather than junk foods; cooperatives in groups; quality of food items prepared; quality of invitations; interest and enthusiasm shown during the picnic.

8. Perform: Creative Manifestation of Material Learned

Objective: To share what was learned with others.

Activity: Children will participate in a picnic with their upper grade buddies sharing with them what they have learned about nutritious foods.

Assessment: Individual interest and participation in sharing knowledge with others

Assessment, Phase Five,Performance, Creative Use of Material Learned: