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OVERVIEW
This is a unit on nutrition for 2nd and 6th graders. A theme common to both grades is that healthy behaviors affect personal health. The second graders will be sharing their knowledge with their families and the school community, while the sixth graders (with a much broader concept of community) will be sharing their knowledge with the school and local communities.

**2nd Grade:** Goals of the 2nd grade nutrition unit are to review food groups and recommended daily intake, then evaluate their diets to see how well they meet the recommendations. Students then work with a partner or alone to find a snack recipe that would satisfy their nutritional need(s). Library Media Specialist will help the students improve their information search skills by providing a selection of print cookbooks, links to sites with healthy snack recipes and examples of how recipes are written in a specific format. The students are connecting their understanding of personal nutritional needs and deficiencies (a real world problem for them) to seeking a solution (an appropriate snack). The students are able to share their findings with the class and create a recipe book to take home for their families. A copy will also be kept in the school library for other students to check out.

**6th Grade:** Goals of lessons are to have 6th grade students explore how nutrition affects certain organs/systems, make students aware of their current nutrition needs which do change over life, apply what they have learned to help them make good nutrition decisions, share the knowledge with people in the community. The inquiry skill area that will be focused on is search, specifically interviewing human sources to help gain and analyze information. Guest speakers will be invited to the school to speak with the students. The students will have done some research on their chosen topic before the speakers arrive so that students will be using the speakers as A resource and not the ONLY source of information. The inquiry skill lesson on interviewing will focus on how to prepare for and question a guest speaker/interviewee for expert information and to compare/contrast the process to that of an interview of a grandparent for personal perspective. The students will choose a format in which to present their nutrition knowledge to the community via television or radio PSA (public service announcement) script that could be aired on the high school channels or a brochure for display in doctors' offices. Students will evaluate and reflect on what they have learned and how it will affect their nutrition choices; and how well their presentations convey their knowledge.

**STUDENTS**
**2nd Grade**: Class of 26 students, most are either 7 or 8 years old. The school is in an affluent suburb and has 760 students enrolled. The school sees significant home support and parental involvement at the school. The percentage of students passing the ISTEP (math and English) is above 93. Since there is parental support, a homework activity that requires the help of a parent can reasonably be assigned with high expectation of it being completed. There is cultural diversity in the classroom and attention should be paid and sensitivity exercised when discussing cultural foods. Second graders are still developing socially and may say things not thinking about how it may be interpreted by others.

**6th Grade:** Class of 40 students in the PE/health class are between 11 and 13 years old. The school is in an affluent suburb with a total school enrollment of 1320 students. 92% of the students pass the English and math ISTEP. Parent support of educational goals is high. Information literacy has been taught throughout the students' curriculum and the students have had access to newer technologies. The students have come from 4 different feeder elementary schools, so while they all have been exposed to information literacy skills the exposure has not been identical.