I got through my very first lesson plan, from beginning to end! I never realized how much process was involved to actually create a full lesson plan, but it was a great learning experience and fun to brainstorm different ways of doing plans.
I decided to do my lesson on the Food Guide Pyramid. I thought that there'd be a ton of ways to present this and I found a lot online about it. It was a fun process.
From our lesson plans that were created, everyone in my class had to actually teach the class for 15 minutes and show every step of the plan. I began mine by showing the class a potato, an apple and a package of cookies that I brought in and asked them what food group each belonged to as a review (my students had learned the day before what the food groups were - hypothetically, of course). I then asked them if they knew how much of each they should eat each day and if five of the Chips Ahoy cookies would make a healthy meal.
From that, I presented to them the Food Guide Pyramid (which I am proud to say I drew on my own on a poster board) and told the class why we need it, what it's used for and then went into how many servings of each food group the students should be eating according to their age range.
Once I presented that, I again reviewed the food groups and used this time to give the class examples of how much one serving was. I printed out 10 pictures of types of food, glued each one to construction paper (the color corresponded to the food group color - one of my ELL aids). As I showed the picture to the class, they told me what food group the food belonged in and I told them in real life terms how much they were supposed to eat each day (1 cup of fruit = 1 apple, 1.5 cups of veggies = 2 large carrots, etc..)
After the lesson was over, I broke the class into groups of four. Each group got a piece of construction paper and was told to design their own healthy lunch menu based off of what we had learned. They were to create a name and design for the front of the menu and present the foods inside.
Their follow-up assignment was to create their own Food Guide Pyramid from the children's section of the web site mypyramid.gov and bring it into class for extra credit.
Overall, it was a fun lesson to present! And I got an A! :)
