Rationale
I have taught in both Maryland and North Carolina for the past 15 years in a variety of settings. I have served both urban and suburban student populations of all racial backgrounds. I also have taught every age group from Kindergarten through graduation. This has given me unique insight into child development at a variety of different ages and stages. In that time, I have observed many disturbing things that prompted me to write this unit. I have watched students of all ages eat a variety of food products that are neither nutritious nor beneficial to their overall health. I have watched them gorge on mounds of chips and candy, drink gallons of soda pop, and devour bag-loads of "fast-foods". Another thing I have noticed is that the amount of physical activity and overall physical fitness of the children I teach has been declining. Physical education classes have often been shortened in length and recess periods have disappeared. Fellow educators from various school districts throughout the United States have echoed these same problems in the course of discussion on the subject. I wrote this unit to help my students establish healthy routines that will last throughout their lifetime.
The federal "National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs" provide a majority of funding for all free and reduced breakfasts and lunches served nationwide. The student's state of residence provides the remaining funds. Food service departments within each local educational agency (LEA) are assigned to develop local lunchroom menus. "Child Nutrition Services," part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System (CMS) where I work, claims on its website that it provides healthy meals to more than 135,000 students and staff members in 167 schools each day. Each day CMS states 27,000 breakfasts and 75,000 lunches are served to both children and staff. This totals more than 18 million meals a year. Presently, forty-six percent of all CMS students are eligible for free or reduced breakfasts and lunch.
In my current position, I am the only elementary science lab teacher at Barringer Academic Center (BAC.) BAC is a medium-sized, urban school in Charlotte, North Carolina and it is classified as a "partial-magnet" school, serving approximately seven hundred and fifty students from Kindergarten through Grade 5. A vast majority, approximately 70%, of our student population receives government assistance in the form of free or reduced lunches at our school.
I will teach this unit to a diverse group of fourth graders. Our student community comes from different racial, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds. In our school, the student population is roughly (75%) African-American, (16%) European-American, (7%) Asian-American and (3%) Hispanic-American. One-third of the entire student population is coded as "Gifted and Talented" (GT). A majority of these GT students are from more affluent, socially mobile, and culturally diverse families. The remaining two-thirds of the BAC population are students from the surrounding neighborhoods of the "West Learning Community" (WLC). Many of the WLC students are from more economically challenged and less diverse environments. However, each individual, no matter where they are from, brings an extremely different set of experiences with him or her, creating a wonderful and sometimes challenging classroom environment.
All students attending BAC are required to have science instruction, three times a week for 45 minutes per session. One of those three sessions is with me in the "science lab" and the other two are with their homeroom teacher. My lab session is also considered a resource class. The unit will be taught entirely in the lab. In the lab, students will engage in a variety of "hands-on" experiences related to food science and nutrition. Along with a diverse population at BAC, there is a staggering discrepancy in knowledge of basic scientific concepts. This compels me to teach by addressing various learning modalities. Scientific principles are approached using the scientific method in conjunction with hands-on experiments, models, visuals, and technology making it interesting to all.
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