Saturday 31 January 2015

Learning about Serving Sizes

Currently in Health and Career Education, we are talking about making healthy food choices based on the Canada Food Guide.  For most students, learning the food groups is pretty straightforward, so is remembering the recommended number of servings for each group.

For 9-13 year olds the number of servings are:

Fruits and Vegetables - 6 servings
Grain Products - 6 servings
Milk and Alternatives - 3 servings
Meat and Alternatives - 1-2 servings

Where things start to get tricky, for kids and adults alike, is trying to figure out just what exactly makes up a serving.  For different foods, one serving equals different amounts of food.  For example, one serving of milk = 1 cup.  One serving of peas = 1/2 cup.

To help students get a better understanding of what one serving actually looked like, I brought in  several different foods and set them up as stations for pairs to rotate through.  For each station, one person needed to measure out the amount of that food that they would typically eat.  Next, they checked the station card to find out the amount of food that equaled one serving. Finally, using measuring spoons, they measured the food they had served themselves to find out how many servings they would usually eat of that food.  

The results were sometimes surprising!  For rice and pasta, one serving equals 1/2 cup which isn't very much.  For most students they were eating a lot more than that; some students realized they were eating as many as nine servings of grains when they had pasta for dinner!

Hopefully this hands-on practice will make it easier for students to estimate the number of servings they are eating when the begin their food diaries next week.



 


Art Gallery Field Trip


 We recently took a field trip to the Surrey Art Gallery where students took part in a mask-making workshop.  Our fantastic instructor, April, explained the basics of hand building with clay, then guided students as they worked through the first few steps of creating their masks.  Once everyone had prepared their clay, it was time for the creativity to flow as students created animals, people, superheroes and even the ocean!  As you can see in the photos, the masks turned out wonderfully.  I was very proud too when April commented several times on what a respectful, attentive, hardworking class I had!

The masks are now in our classroom drying out.  They will then be fired in our kiln and painted.  I'm sure the final products will be amazing!

A special thanks to all our volunteer drivers who took time out of their schedules to accompany us.  As always, this trip would not have been possible without you!








Monday 19 January 2015

Inuit Traditions

In Social Studies, we have been learning about the Inuit.  Below are videos about three Inuit cultural traditions from the Inuit Cultural Online Resource.

Division 9 Students -  After watching the videos, post a comment explaining one new thing that you learned from each video.