| Purpose: |
To allow 6th through 8th grade students
an opportunity to learn about the factors that
influence why they are who they are. These factors
include learning about genetics and how they inherit
family traits, what nutrients they need and why
they are important, and how individuals experience
growth spurts |
| Objectives: |
- Students will learn to identify their body
shape.
- Students will be able to identify the six
nutrient classes and one food item from each
class.
- Students will be able to identify what
a growth spurt is.
|
Summary of Learning Activities:
Being Unique:
Design a Veggie Person
In this activity each student will “create”
his or her own unique individual given the choices
of body shapes and parts available. After the Veggie
People are created and printed off, make a bulletin
board of the “family” of Veggie People.
Class discussion ticklers: Is there any Veggie Person
who is exactly the same as another? What makes each
Veggie Person special or unique? What does this activity
tell us about ourselves? From where do we get the
features or traits that are part of each one of us?
Growing
Times Activity
Students will print a growth record from the site.
They will keep the growth record for their own personal
knowledge of growth and milestones over the next few
years.
Nutrient
Word Search
Students will print the word search from the site.
Students can hand in completed word search puzzle
to teacher.
Supplemental
Activities:
The following are additional assignments you can use
with your students as they explore what makes them
who they are. Students may use the following activity
to describe themselves to someone else as a chance
to show what they have learned about why they are
who they are.
Pen Pal
Activity:
Have you ever had a pen pal? A pen pal is someone
who lives in another town and the only way that you
could get to know them is by writing to them. Probably
one of the first things a pen pal would want to know
about you is what you look like!!! If you had to describe
yourself to someone else, what would you say? Assign
students to write a paragraph about themselves. You
could play a guessing game with the written descriptions
to see if classmates can guess whose description it
is.
Background
Notes for Teachers:
During the adolescent growth spurt it is normal to
almost double body weight. This can be alarming to
some of our youth who live in a society with its eyes
on the bathroom scales. It is crucial to teach young
people to have realistic expectations about their
weight.
Growth brings many changes. At the
completion of growth, girls will have slightly more
body fat than boys, which is normal. Overly cautious
girls, however, can get into trouble if they try to
manipulate their eating habits to avoid this natural
phase of growth.
Providing information about nutrients
needed for growth is one way to emphasize normal eating
behaviors. Throughout this unit, drive home the point
that each person is unique and individual. If care
is taken in choosing healthy food patterns and getting
adequate physical activity, children will grow and
develop into the person they were meant to be.
Nutrient
Word Search Answer Key (Adobe Acrobat file)
|
