Health

=Content Area: Health =

Curriculum Standard:
 **National Health Education Standard 3 :** Demonstrate the ability to access valid information, products, and services to enhance health. Performance Indicator 3.8.2: Access valid health information from home, school, and community. Performance Indicator 7.8.2: Demonstrate healthy practices and behaviors that will maintain or improve the health of self and others.
 * National Health Education Standard 7** : Demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce health risks.

Technology:
Students will interact with online quizzes using a classroom response system, answering questions about the nutritional content of fast food menu items. One classroom set of twenty-five iClickers will be used. A projector will be used to display the polling results from the iClickers, and it will also be used to display the following quizzes: Fast Food Quiz 1 Fast Food Quiz 2 Using a computer lab with 25 stations, students will use Google Docs along with the websites Drive Thru Diet and Fast Food Facts to create healthy menus. These websites contain detailed nutrition facts for many popular fast food restaurants.

Description:
The teacher will use a projector and a laptop computer with Internet access to display the interactive quizzes. The students will respond using an iClicker, and the results will appear at the front of the room. The teacher will guide the discussion about nutrition, using the tabulated results to determine which topics need further elaboration. As a follow up assignment, students will create a healthy one day menu. They will be limited to menu items from fast food restaurants. Their menus must include a total daily calorie count, as well as a total daily fat intake. They will use Drive Thru Diet and Fast Food Facts to create their menu. They will post their menus using a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Image from @http://www.foodfacts.info/ Screenshot of Google Docs: [|http://spreadsheets.google.com]

Supporting Research:
 In the article // Clickers: A Teaching Gimmick that Works //, several advantages of using clickers in a classroom are given. The students can answer anonymously, and at the same time learn they are not alone if they answer incorrectly. By keeping the students actively engaged in the lesson, they tend to retain more of the presented information. The teacher gets immediate feedback from the students, and can clarify information on the spot as needed.

// Global projects and digital tools: that make students global learners // discusses the ease of use of Google Docs as a Web 2.0 tool for the classroom. It states “u sing such digital tools is not only very appealing to students, but it also often makes a difference in their learning.”

Gersh, S., (2009). Global projects and digital tools: that make students global learners. //Multimedia & Internet @ Schools,// Retrieved from Wood, W., (2004). Clickers: A Teaching Gimmick that Works. //Developmental Cell, 7,// 796-798

Tried and True or New and Innovative?
The use of classroom response systems has become widely used on college campuses, but using them in a middle school classroom is somewhat new. Google Docs is a tried and true application, but it is not used widely in middle school classrooms.