Lessons of a Lesson Plan

     This lesson plan was good practice for finding ways to relate one single topic into different types of subjects. It was a challenge to actually start the entire process but once my ideas were in order, it was a walk in the park. Some of the things that I actually liked about this lesson plan were how I grouped the students, it was at random and this was to help the students work outside of their comfort zone. Beaudoin (2005) found that, a little anxiety can help us perform at our peak, psychologists have found — in other words, when we challenge ourselves, we tend to rise to the occasion. This is good because we should be teaching our students, at an early age, how to deal with situations in which they will not be with people they are comfortable with.  This also teaches them how to adapt to the styles of others and how to correlate everyone’s ideas and mesh them all together.

       If I could change anything, I would change the idea of using cereal and keep all of the same parameters of the lesson and do the project on the meals that the kids get from the cafeteria throughout the week. As a class, we would ask for the menu for the week and we will decide what three days, and their meals, will we be looking at and examining. We could do everything the same as the cereal plan but we would have more information to look at. This would be a more in depth project and would require a considerable amount of time but this could be placed as somewhat of a research project for a final grade or something similar.

       This lesson would be a part of a larger grouping of lessons that could fall under my “Nutrition” section that I would be teaching. After learning about nutrition labels, how to read them, and some use and analysis of our favorite cereals, I would teach the students more in depth about their nutrition and what exactly is going into their bodies. We would discuss and look at the different ingredients and results of short-term to long-term exposure to each specific ingredient and how they would work as agonists and antagonists in the body. Research by Holli and Beto (2014) supports that many studies have shown that eating habits are established early in the life cycle and tend to carry through to adulthood. As a result, the food that children eat now will undoubtedly influence their state of health in later life. I feel that everything would be perfectly correlated and this lesson would perfectly follow up my previous lesson plan.

      By the time evaluation comes around, I would better understand the constraints of teaching the lesson in my school and how I can better prepare my lesson. I will also have learned more about the uniqueness of students and how to address the needs of every child while still covering the lesson, challenging young minds, and igniting constant hunger for knowledge and understanding. The objectives state clear standards provided for students and at the end of the lesson, they will have mastered everything required for that section. That correlates with the evaluation because the objectives are looking for understanding of the material placed in front of them. It also looks at the students’ observation skills and critical thinking skills. One aspect that I can think of that I feel was not included in the ASSURE lesson plan format is the initial interest because at first glance, cereal is not the most attractive food in the world. I feel as though students would have an easier time learning and being hooked on learning if they were interested in the topic from the start, but that is hardly ever the case. Although cereal is not seen immediately as an exciting food, it is up to me as the teacher to find the appeal factor as well as make it fun for the students to learn and easy to pick up. I felt as though I had a good amount of resources and assistance but there is always room for improvement. I feel like there could have been more assignments to do with the same information, or perhaps give the students a hypothetical question that would encourage critical thinking. The assistance would have come from the extra assignments because it would have enforced the lesson more and it would have also made the assignment more challenging. I would have been able to get more out of students and they probably would have had more information sticking in their heads.

       Overall, it was a lot of fun putting this lesson plan together and I know this would have been a lot of fun to teach in class. A lesson is only as fun as the teacher makes it!

Beaudoin, N. (2005). Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone Lessons for School Leaders. New York, NY: Routledge.

Holli, B. B., & Beto, J. A. (2014). Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills for Dietetics Professionals. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.