Your Health is Your Wealth!

Home Economics Unit
Me and My Diet

This unit aims to help young people make informed decisions about nutrition and a healthy diet and how food choice and eating habits can impact on this.

Key Questions:

  1. What influences my diet?
  2. How does money impact on healthy food choices?
  3. How could we make our canteen healthy, fun and value for money?

Developing Pupils’ Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities

Developing the Key Concept of Healthy Eating

  • Collating, recording and representing information
    (Managing Information)
  • Organising and planning how to go about a task
    (Self management)
  • Experimenting with different designs, actions and outcomes
    (Being creative)

 

Explore ways to ensure a healthy diet.

Develop practical skills in the safe, hygienic, healthy and creative use of food to plan, prepare, cook and serve a range of meals.

What influences my diet?

Learning Intentions
Pupils are learning…

Possible Learning, Teaching and Assessment Activities

…about factors that have an influence on teenage food choices.

Individually or in groups, brainstorm what influences teenager’s food choices.

Possible factors could be:

  • Lifestyle
  • Media
  • Likes/dislikes
  • Fashion trends
  • Peer influences
  • Foreign influences
  • Religion
  • Availability
  • Health issues
  • Emotional state
  • Time of day

Alternatively, a number of the above could be used as the basis for questions in a Carousel Activity. For example:

  • How do advertisements affect what you choose to eat?
  • Do you make an effort to eat healthy foods? If yes, what do you choose?
  • What food do you like or dislike?
  • What food is easy to get?
  • How does the time of day affect what you eat?
  • Do you eat the same kind of food as your friends?

 

How does money impact on healthy food choices?

Learning Intentions
Pupils are learning…

Possible Learning, Teaching and Assessment Activities

…that the food available in school has an impact on their food choice.

Research recently has shown that there is a need for changes in the food available to pupils in school (Jamie Oliver’s ‘Feed Me Better’ campaign). You could possibly refer to this campaign as a lead in to this unit of work.

…to take personal responsibility for a role within a group, looking at developing a new café.
Working With Others

In groups pupils imagine how they could run a café within the school environment. Use a Creative Matrix to generate ideas, using the following headings:

  • Type of food
  • Target pupils
  • Where / Method of delivery

Different roles are assigned within the team. Pupils consider and develop the following:

  • A name and slogan for the café.
  • Aims of the café.
  • Design of café and its facilities.
  • Sample break and/or lunchtime menu(s) (possibly different menus for different days).
  • Costing of dishes/snacks. Teacher guidance may be required here. This could be an ICT research task to find out the price of different foods from different supermarket websites. Alternatively, pupils could estimate the price of different foods with help of teacher.
    Opportunity to assess ICT (design and/or research)

 

How could we make our canteen healthy, fun and value for money?

Learning Intentions
Pupils are learning …

Possible Learning, Teaching and Assessment Activities

… to select, classify, compare and evaluate information by carrying out research.
Managing Information

 

 

 

 


 

…to use a range of methods for collating, recording, representing and communicating information with a sense of audience and purpose.
Managing Information

 

Pupils carry out market research among their peers to find out the opinion of teenagers about the canteen in their school.

 

Possible questions:

  • How would you rate the current school canteen menu?
  • What are your likes and dislikes?
  • Do you get value for money in the canteen?
  • Would you make changes to your school canteen design?
  • What facilities would you like to see in the school canteen?
  • What changes would you make to the menu?

If possible, this market research could be recorded using a camcorder and the results analysed by the team before carrying out the main points of the task.

Opportunity to assess Using Mathematics

 

Using information from this market research, each team could revisit their plans for a café and make any adjustments that they feel would improve their plans.

They then present their revised plans to the rest of the class.

Self and peer evaluation:

Groups select two good points about others’ presentations and one area of improvement for their own (variation of Two Stars and a Wish).

…to develop practical skills in the safe, hygienic, healthy and creative use of foods to plan, prepare, cook and serve dishes from their five day menu.

 

 

 

…to compare their approach with others and in different contexts.

In groups, pupils could plan, prepare, cook and serve a selection of dishes from their team’s menu(s).

They could use digital camera to record the work of the teams.
Opportunity to assess Using ICT

Teams should evaluate their work as individuals and as part of a group (Two Stars and a Wish).

Invite canteen and senior staff to taste and evaluate the choices. Ask the canteen staff to share their issues and tips about running a canteen.

If possible, ideas from the class could be incorporated into the plans of the school canteen.

 


Development of Learning Outcomes

  • Demonstrate skills in the safe, hygienic, healthy and creative use of food.
  • Research and manage information effectively to investigate Home Economics issues, using Mathematics and ICT where appropriate.
  • Show deeper understanding by thinking critically and flexibly, solving problems and making informed decisions, using Mathematics and ICT where appropriate.
  • Demonstrate creativity and initiative when developing ideas and following them through.
  • Work effectively with others.
  • Demonstrate self-management by working systematically, persisting with tasks, evaluating and improving own performance.
  • Communicate effectively in oral, visual, written, mathematical and ICT formats, showing clear awareness of audience and purpose.

 

 

Links with Key Elements:

Links with Learning for Life and Work:

Personal Health

Employability

Media Awareness

Cultural Understanding

Personal Understanding.

 

Personal Development
Key Concept: Personal Health
Key Concept: Self Awareness: Investigate the influences on a young person.

Employability
Key Concept: Enterprise and Entrepreneurship