Module 5 - A New Light on Nutrition Education
A Comprehensive Coordinated Approach – The Connection
Intro Video:
Offering kids plenty of great fruits and vegetables provides them with choices for healthy eating habits, and hands-on, experiential nutrition education is a fun and memorable way for children to learn about those fruits and veggies. Many school nutrition directors, servers, and kitchen managers use a variety of creative ways to provide interactive nutrition education and introduce an array of fruits and vegetables at breakfast. Nutrition education in the cafeteria, café, or serving area can be affordable and simple. It reinforces nutrition lessons that teachers are already doing. These efforts can lead to something larger that involves the whole school and community. The biggest of ideas often grow from one smaller, great idea. Borrowing creative ideas from other districts, other kitchen managers, enthusiastic teachers, and from the Internet is a fantastic place to start. Remember, experiential, interactive nutrition education is one of the most important keys to creating long-lasting healthy eating habits in our children.Reinforcing healthy food choices and nutrition education involves a comprehensive, coordinated approach, connecting the classroom or curriculum, café or dining experience, and the community
Café or Cafeteria
- Try posting interesting and relevant nutritional information for students to read or interact with in the serving area.
- Sample new fruits and vegetables, or even a new way of serving, while providing nutrition information.
Curriculum or classroom
- Start a school garden. Students love to plant, care for, harvest and eat the fruits and vegetables they grow, and it develops an appreciation for how produce is grown.
- Conduct field studies at local farms.. Farmers can demonstrate the care needed to grow produce.
- Farmers’ market provide a learning opportunity and activities for students. Kids can enjoy locally grown produce while learning about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables.
Community
- Invite others to join a health fair that highlights your school’s wellness policies. This is a great opportunity to feature your new breakfast produce items and get the community involved in your wellness program.
- Kick-off a promotion for“School Breakfast Week” or National Nutrition Month featuring fruits and vegetables. Students build a promotion campaign, including bulletins, interactive classroom lessons, and signage. Throughout this one-week blitz, servers and students create 30-second nutrition messages for different produce items and share them with the entire school community.
A Penny for Your Thoughts
Nutrition Education That Doesn’t Break the Bank
Elementary Ideas
Video Clip:
Use Harvest of the Month materials to help you feature seasonal fruits or vegetables. Provide stickers to students who attend breakfast and try the new produce. Teachers can also have the Harvest of the Month educator newsletter, and take attendance by asking whether the student ate a featured fruit or veggie at breakfast. Send menus home with students, and include breakfast items with fruits and veggies listed first in the menus. Remind parents that school breakfasts help students learn and stay healthy, and add fun facts about featured produce for that week. Put activities on the back of menus, and give incentives to teachers and students to complete the activities. Ask students to create fun and educational bulletin boards to deliver your nutritional message every day.
Secondary Ideas
Video Clip:
Have students in technology or art classes design posters that provide nutrition education about a fruit or vegetable that is new to the breakfast menu. Students can assist with tastings of a featured fruit or veggie by handing out nutrition information. The taste testers can complete a scoring sheet or simply vote for the produce they prefer. During National Nutrition Month, students can make announcements over the school intercom. They can give facts about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, and the importance of school breakfast. Bite-size samples of mentioned veggies and fruit can then be provided at breakfast.
Utilizing your biggest resource – students!
Utilizing Students
Video Clip:
In working through the baby steps of nutrition education, a good approach may be to direct these efforts to a small group of students. Students listen to each other, and can be a powerful influence on each other. So working with one classroom or a group of students such as breakfast student helpers, or student leadership groups, or extracurricular clubs, is a great way to kick off your nutrition education efforts. Starting small can give your site the momentum needed to try bigger ideas that involve the whole school and community.
For my media class, I interviewed teachers on their favorite fruit or veggie. Then I added nutritional information to the story and broadcast it on our televised morning announcements. It was really cool.
Have a group of us plan breakfast menus for one week that features a different color fruit every day for taste testing.
Our art class could design a pledge banner for the cafeteria that students could sign every time they tried a new fruit.
In our class, we vote for everybody’s favorite fruits and vegetables. Our teacher puts it on the big graph, and we put it on the wall so everybody can see it.Creating Cafeteria-Classroom-Community Connections
Creating a Connection – Conducting Taste Tests
Video Clip:
Whether you’re planning to conduct a tasting in the cafeteria or the classroom, there are several factors you’ll want to consider. Decide how you will gather data on student preferences, and keep the rating system as simple as possible. How you display the produce items you’ve chosen to sample is crucial to the success of a good tasting. Show a piece of fruit whole somewhere in the display, but prepare bite-size samples for them to try. The best way to start a tasting is to introduce the fruit or vegetable to your students by letting them hold it. Then, show them interesting features of the produce, and tell them about its value to their health. It’s always a great idea to recognize students’ efforts by giving them a small gift for participating. Pencils, stickers, and visual handouts are perfect. Many teachers will support and reinforce what you are doing by giving additional nutrition education about your fresh fruits and vegetables. Once students have tasted it, have them rate the fruit or vegetable using a very simple form of evaluation. You might ask them to suggest other produce items they’d like to try or have served in the cafeteria. This is a nice opportunity to hear from your customer, and at the same time teach them something about nutrition.Creating Cafeteria-Classroom-Classroom Connections
When planning a successful tasting, stimulate the appetite by stimulating all five senses. You want your students to…
See it!
Beautifully presented food encourages students to select and try it. Contrast colors to catch students’ attention. A colorful garnish will make your sample even more appetizing.Smell it!
Aroma enhances the attraction of food and increases the anticipation to taste it. Choose ripe, juicy produce that smells delicious.Taste it!
Fresh, well-prepared food provides positive experiences physically and emotionally. Choose flavors that complement each other, such as honeydew melons with lemon. Students love mouth-watering combinations.Feel it!
A variety of textures in fruits ad vegetables adds interest to flavors. Try finger foods that add sensory stimulation and make tasting easy.Hear it!
Crisp, crunchy food is fun to eat. Point out to students the sound the fruit or vegetable makes. This adds to the fun of the tasting!Creating Connections – School Gardens
Video Clip:
School gardens provide tangible, rewarding learning experiences. Students who plant, nurture, and harvest their own foods develop a greater appreciation for healthy foods and healthy lifestyles. The consumption of fruits and vegetables go up, and their science achievement scores go up as well. Participating in gardening activities cultivates a sense of community, as well as students’ social development, academic achievement, and environmental stewardship. Because teamwork and parent volunteers are involved, there’s often a positive effect on behavior and social skills. Teachers report an improvement in self-esteem and attitudes toward school from student gardeners. Child nutrition and food service personnel have a unique opportunity to work with teachers and students to feature school-grown foods in taste tests, as additions to salads, or in other dishes. Students can clean and prepare the food, if the school district and county health office allows. With a little effort and cooperation, a school gardening program can be implemented with continual rewards that reach throughout the campus.Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education
Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Opening Page
Video Clip:
Organizing health fairs and other grand-scale school events can bring about opportunities to bridge the community with your students in a comprehensive nutrition education effort. There are countless ways for students of all ages to be involved. The key is to make it fun for the kids. It’s the perfect opportunity to get them excited about trying fruits and vegetables, and to learn the reasons why they’re so important for their health. Connecting students with local farmers is another great way to put some excitement and relevance into nutrition education. Farmers are often passionate about what they do, and eager to help you. Nutrition education does not have to stop at the door of your site. There is an abundance of resources and agencies that can help you build that bridge into a communitywide effort toward better health for your students.Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – What is Good Nutrition Education?
Video Clip:
When I first started teaching, I was honestly astounded with how many unhealthy habits children had. And being in the classroom, I tried to incorporate as many healthy food items within lessons to expose the kids to healthier foods. Not only did I do this, but I also encouraged other teachers to do this, and so we came up with some great ideas of how to correlate nutrition education with core curricular subjects. With math, language arts, and science…And what we realized is, that kids are so excited to learn about healthy foods. And if you incorporate it with a core curricular subject that meets a standard, then the administrators are happy that the students are working on their basic skills as well as improving their eating habits. As a teacher, we realize that it is important to incorporate many different modalities within a lesson, and when you’re teaching nutrition education, it’s no different. Bring the produce into the classroom, give the students the opportunity to get their hands involved, get their senses involved. We’re not only teaching them orally, we’re not only giving them visuals, we’re also giving them a chance to touch the produce, get their kinesthetics involved. Good nutrition education will incorporate as much of that as you possibly can in a lesson. So you’re encouraging kids to make healthy goals for themselves, to eat healthier, to exercise more. You’re encouraging kids to read food labels and compare percentages. Within Hawthorne School District, we’ve had numerous site events called Family Nutrition Nights, and this is when we have stations that revolve around specific activities that teach students and parents, as well as teachers and administrators, about specific foods within the food pyramid. It teaches them about how to make healthy choices. Giving the students the opportunity to learn with their parents as well during these events is a great time for family, and a great time for students and parents to make goals together. So, good nutrition education really encompasses all of that. It’s incorporating as much as you can in a lesson, building those skills, making it exciting, so the kids are well prepared to move forward in life with healthy habits and great knowledge.Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Watch a Classroom Example!
Video Clip:
Foods that are whole and natural are better for us than foods that have added sugar and added fat. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely! So we have some helpers in the classroom today, and they put some food items into the food groups. And what we’re going to do together is you’re going to help me decide which foods are whole and natural, and which foods in each food group have added sugars and added fats. Okay, boys and girls, the vegetables…Who can help me decide what kind of vegetable this is? Yes? Very good, it’s an eggplant. So is this an example of whole and natural? Is this an example of whole and natural? No, because it has added sugars to it. Right. Very good. So it’s all about making healthier choices. Now, the yellow orange produce contains vitamin C. Why is vitamin C important? Yes?Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Making a Tasting Educational
Video Clip:
As a teacher in a low-income area, I’ve realized the importance of exposing children to a variety of produce. So, when kids have the chance to touch and feel and taste new produce, and learn how it’s good for them, they’re so excited. Not only because they get to taste them, but also because they get to play with the food and learn at the same time. So, after the students have the opportunity to taste the healthy food items, they’re excited about the new nutrition information they’ve learned, they’re going home, they’re talking to their parents about the produce, they’re teaching the parents about the healthy benefits the produce provides, or healthy food items. And the parents are actually going into the grocery stores, and going to farmers’ markets that they hadn’t done before, and purchasing the food items. Exposing kids to new foods, such as the loquat, is a wonderful experience. Because the loquat is something they’ve probably seen before, but they’ve never had the chance to try it. So, giving the kids the chance to taste it and discover they like it is a very exciting experience for them.Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Watch a Tasting!
Video Clip:
Aren’t those beautiful? Yeah! And a loquat, again, is a fruit. And it grows off of a tree that can grow probably about ten feet tall. And what does the skin feel like? It feels smooth? Does it feel like any other produce that you know of? Does it feel like the skin of a pear, maybe? Yeah? Okay. Did you smell it? What does it smell like? It smells sweet! Very good! Well, boys and girls, again, what did I tell you about different colored produce? Different colored produce has lots of? Vitamins in it. Well, what kind of vitamins do you think this produce, the loquat, has? Go ahead and look through your packet and find the yellow and orange description…You take your string, okay? And you put it on the side of the loquat, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to measure the distance around the loquat. We’re gonna see how long of a measurement it is around the loquat.
Here we go, are you ready? Take a bite. Yum!Bright Ideas From Others
Maximize farm fresh produce for breakfast in the classroom.
Robert Schram says "After we started introducing the breakfast in the classroom, and we started bringing the fresh fruits into the classroom, the teachers really got involved and really got excited about the fruits and vegetables we were bringing in, and said, “Hey! Maybe we need to start doing some nutrition education!” So, we’ve partnered up with some local farmers, the nutrition network, and other people, to get the teachers involved. And we’ve really seen a rise in the consumption of fruit by the student population, because now they know it’s healthier for them. So, they’re getting involved and they’re really enjoying it."
Creative ways to fund your ideas.
Michelle Roman says "Harvest of the Month can be funded in several different ways. One is, we wrote a grant, actually, that was an outside grant through the state of California, and it was an antitrust settlement fund through the Attorney General’s office. So there are different types of funding out there. But one really great piece that you can get some funding for your Harvest of the Month program is work with local service clubs in your area. Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs are always looking to participate in schools and adopt schools, and what a great way that they can connect with the schools in providing this great opportunity to talk about nutrition in the classroom."
Utilize existing resources – your salad bar, Nutrition Network recipes, and your community.
Brenda Padilla says "One of the things we’re doing is utilizing our lunch fruit and vegetable bars at breakfast. It didn’t occur to us at first that the kids would think it was a novelty, but they do like self-serving the fruits and vegetables at breakfast. It’s bringing the kids in, it’s increasing participation. One of the things that’s new on the bar that they really like is the yogurt parfait, utilizing the Team Nutrition recipe cards, and, also, in that we use our commodity fruit at the same time. So they’re getting yet another serving, at least, of fruit that morning. One of the things that’s made a huge difference for our breakfast program is the partnering with the community members who bring the marketing to the program, provide the brochures, get the word out that it’s really cool to eat breakfast with us. And the kids and the parents think it’s cool, it’s increased our participation. They’re doing things that we cannot do, but make all the difference in the world for our program."