Lesson 4.5: Your Nutrition Plan

Overview

This lesson focuses on identifying important elements of a nutrition plan and provides students the opportunity to identify challenges associated with following a nutrition plan.

Learning Targets

  • Describe how to keep a food log.
  • Describe two ways to analyze your diet.
  • Practice setting SMART nutrition goals.
  • Follow your nutrition plan and reflect on your progress.
  • Describe how to ask for support in meeting your nutrition goals.

Preparation

For the Warm-Up Activity: Write the journal question on the board, or identify (and copy as needed) the worksheets you plan to use:

For the Content Focus: Open the Lesson 4.5 PowerPoint slides, or make copies of the Lesson 4.5 Note-Taking Guide.

For the Lesson Focus: Copy the Lesson 4.5 Asking for Support Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet.

Warm-Up Activity

Select a warm-up activity to help get your class focused and on task.

  • Journal Question: Have you ever kept track of how much you eat in a day or how well you eat in a day? How might keeping track of your food intake help you eat a better diet?
    • Option: Write or project the question, and have students respond in their journals as they enter class.
    • Option: Have students discuss the question with a partner or in a small group.
  • Vocabulary Review: Have students work individually, in partners, or in small groups to complete the Lesson 4.5 Vocabulary Review Worksheet.
  • Quiz: Have students complete the Lesson 4.5 Quiz to assess their prior knowledge.
    • Option: Collect the quizzes, and use them alongside posttests to demonstrate student learning.
    • Option: Have students share their answers with a partner, and then go over the answers together as a class.

Lesson Content

Review the content from the textbook lesson.

Option: Use the Lesson 4.5 PowerPoint slides to review the chapter content.

Option: Have students use the Lesson 4.5 Note-Taking Guide to review chapter content. Ask students to work alone, in pairs, or in small groups. Review the questions as a class if time permits.

Lesson Focus: Asking for Support

  1. Provide each student with one copy of the Lesson 4.5 Asking for Support Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet.
  2. Review the directions for the worksheet with students.
  3. Direct students to complete this assignment individually.
  4. When students have finished, ask them to read their scripts to their elbow partner.
  5. Direct students to analyze the scripts for effectiveness. Would this script be helpful when asking for support?
  6. Ask students to share scripts they found helpful with the class.

Challenge Activity

Have students who need an additional challenge work on the following critical-thinking task.

Create a restaurant menu with meals that would align with your nutrition goals. Come up with two lunch items and two dinner items for your menu. Give each item a name and describe the ingredients of each meal.

Reflection and Summary

Review the critical content from today’s lesson. Review the learning targets, and ask students to answer each question posed.

Can you…

  • Describe how to keep a food log?

    A food log is a list of all the foods and the amounts of each food you ate over a set period of time. To log your food intake, write down everything you eat and drink for one day (a 24-hour period). You can record everything you ate and drank yesterday, everything you ate in the past 24 hours, or what you eat for the next 24 hours.

  • Describe two ways to analyze your diet?

    Ask yourself the following questions: Am I getting the right amount of food? Am I getting the right amount of each food group? Do I eat foods high in iron and calcium? Do I get enough fiber? Do I eat too much sodium?

  • Practice setting SMART nutrition goals?

    After you have worked on meeting your goals for a couple of weeks, you will want to reflect on how well you are doing. If you aren’t having much success in meeting your short-term goals or your strategies don’t seem to be working, you may need to adjust one or both.

  • Follow your nutrition plan and reflect on your progress?

    When setting nutrition goals, it is especially important that your goals be realistic. Think carefully about what you can and can’t do, and remember that small improvements in your diet will add up over time.

  • Describe how to ask for support in meeting your nutrition goals?

    Make sure you explain what you are trying to do and why it is important to you, identify the situations when you might need the most support, and explain the type of support you need.

Assessment

Complete one or more of the following assessment tasks for this lesson.

  • Quiz: Have students take the Lesson 4.5 Quiz.
  • Vocabulary Review: Collect the Lesson 4.5 Vocabulary Review Worksheets, and evaluate them for accuracy.
  • Note-Taking Guide: Collect the completed Lesson 4.5 Note-Taking Guides, and spot check one or more items for completion and accuracy.
  • Skill-Building Worksheet: Have students submit the Asking for Support Skill-Building Challenge Worksheets, and use the Healthy Communication Holistic Rubric to evaluate their skill development.
  • Journal Question: Ask students to respond to the journal question again, adding information they learned from today’s class. Require a one-paragraph response that uses proper grammar.

Take It Home

Share your nutrition plan with a member of your family. Share with that person what they can do to help support you in reaching your goals.