Think -Aloud

I prepared a think-aloud on MyPlate for health. MyPlate is full of information on nutrition, but what exactly does MyPlate recommend for you?

Think- aloud questions.

When I look at how many servings of fruits I should have each day, I notice that…

When I look at how many servings of vegetables I should have on a daily basis, I notice that…

When I look what half of my plate should consist of, I notice that…

When I look at how much food from the protein group is needed daily, I notice that…

When I look at how much food is needed on a daily basis from the grain group, I notice that…

When I look at what foods are included in the diary group, I notice that…

When I look at how much food from the dairy group is needed daily, I notice that…

When I look at what foods are included in the protein group, I notice that…

I conducted a think-aloud in front of my 15 year old son about MyPlate and what the recommendations are for daily nutrition.  I gave him papers that I had printed off from ChooseMyPlate.gov that had nutritional information about how many servings you should get from each food group on a daily basis.  The text also provided information about what foods belong to the different food groups. 

I gave my son the text about MyPlate and I let him read through the text to allow him to see what the text consisted of.  Then I asked him the think-aloud questions. Asking him these questions really opened up a conversation about the food groups and helped him figure out how much food from these different food groups that he should be getting on a daily basis.  He also noticed that the text said that these totals are for individuals who get 30 minutes of exercise each day or less.  So he said that if you are exercising more each day, like he is, then he should be getting more calories and more totals each day.  This exercise helped him to notice that he should be eating a lot more fruits and vegetables and that he is getting plenty of dairy each day.  He loves to drink milk. 

I felt that this exercise turned out great and my son learned a lot about nutrition and how much food you should be getting in each of the different food groups each day.  This exercise did open his eyes to what food groups he needs to be more aware of when he is deciding his meals at school and at home.  This activity will help him to build a more healthy plate in the future. 

When individuals learn at a young age to eat healthy, this will help in their future to eat healthier so they can live a long healthy life with little to no health risks.

If I did this lesson in the future the thing that I would do differently is to have a more condense text for students to read.  The text that I prepared for my son was lengthy and consisted of six pages.  I would condense the text to only have what is recommended for the different food groups in their age groups.  

Synthesis

In my classroom the way that I choose to teach vocabulary words is I want to implement a bell ringer when class begins.  So during the first 5 minutes of class have a questions that they have to answer about health or vocabulary words that they need to define.  This way I can teach them vocabulary words and by writing the word down with the definition will reinforce the students learning new vocab words. 

The way that I will support my students in writing texts and producing other representations is having students prepare oral reports.  Also, with the oral reports I will have them prepare a PowerPoints or Prezi to represent a health topic. 

I will integrate digital technologies in my classroom by having health apps and health websites that I will present to the class and have them do classroom assignments with the digital technology.  I can have the students also go to choosemyplate.gov to teach them about MyPlate and to teach them about power tracker.  This power tracker will help the students keep track of their daily intake of food and see how nutritious they are.  

Oral Language

I observed a teacher in my content of health.  The teacher structured oral language in her classroom by using a PowerPoint on my plate.  I felt that the teacher was just up in front of the classroom lecturing the students and not really giving the students opportunity to ask questions or to discuss what she was lecturing about.  It was very much just the teacher talking and the students taking notes.  I felt that the teacher could have used other methods to teach the students about my plate.  Some suggestions could be:

·         Fishbowl discussion

·         Speaking tokens

·         Bean bag toss

I feel that students learn better when they are actively engaged in learning about a topic instead of just being lectured to by the teacher.  When students can brainstorm and come up with the definitions by themselves or learn from their peers sometimes this helps the students learn better.