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This image shows a real life balanced plate that corresponds with MyPlate visuals.

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Students will know:

The 5 food groups represented on MyPlate and examples of foods in each group.

How to use the Food Facts Label to identify foods that are low in sugar and high in calcium.

The difference between nutrient dense foods and non-nutrient dense foods.

Appropriate portion sizes for each food group.

The basic functions and needs for the human body, such as eating.

That a variety of foods provide a variety of essential nutrients.

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Students will understand that:

Eating nutrient rich food and beverages gives the body energy to properly function.

The food choices you make affect health and growth.

Nutrient dense foods work as fuel for daily function.

Eating and drinking in moderation maintains good health.

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Students will be able to:

Effectively use MyPlate to plan healthy and balanced meals, such as breakfast.

Accurately read and interpret Food Facts Labels to make conscious and knowledgeable food choices.

Identify specific nutrient dense food and beverages.

Actively demonstrate proper portion sizes of each of the 5 MyPlate food groups.

Explain how the body uses food and water for energy.

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Students will show:

Responsibility in how their food choices affect their body's function, growth, and overall health.

Self-awareness in their environment and how it supports or does not support a healthy lifestyle.

Curiosity about types of food, tastes of food, and how they nourish and support the body in growth and function.

Proactiveness in making healthy choices early in life can affect your future health and wellness later in life.

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Eating nutrient dense food gives the body energy to properly function.

1. Why do some foods give longer-lasting energy than others?

2. How do nutrient dense foods give the body energy?

3. How can someone determine if a meal is balanced?

The food choices you make affect health and growth.

1. How do food choices affect how the body grows?

2. Why should we eat a variety of food rather than the same thing everyday?

3. What happens to the body when too many non-nutrient dense foods are eaten?

4. How can eating healthy food help to perform better in school or on the playground?

Nutrient dense foods work as fuel for daily function.

1. How do vitamins, such as calcium, help bones stay strong?

2. How do nutrient dense food become fuel for the body?

3. Why do some foods provide quick energy, but make the body tired and hungry faster?

Eating and drinking in moderation maintains good health.

1. How can we use MyPlate as a guide to plan balanced, nutrient dense meals?

2. How can eating and drinking in moderation keep bodies healthy?

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Eating nutrient rich food gives the body energy to properly function.

1. What does it mean for a food to be considered nutrient dense?

The food choices you make affect health and growth.

1. What kinds of food makes our bones strong?

Nutrient dense foods work as fuel for daily function.

1. What are a few examples of nutrient dense foods in each of the 5 MyPlate groups?

2. How can we use the Food Facts Label to identify nutrient dense foods?

Eating and drinking in moderation maintains good health.

1. What does "moderation" mean when it comes to eating and drinking?

2. How does portion size affect the balance of a meal?

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Is it possible to be "healthy" even if you do not always consume nutrient dense food? Why or why not?

Should healthy (nutrient dense) food be more affordable (cheaper) than "junk" (non-nutrient dense) food?

Who would you say is responsible for helping kids make healthy food choices? Why?

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3.NPA.1 Apply tools (MyPlate, Food Facts Label) to plan healthy nutrition and fitness.

3.NPA.1.1 Use MyPlate to eat a nutritious breakfast each morning.

3.NPA.1.2 Check the Food Facts Label to determine foods that are low in sugar and high in calcium.

3.NPA.2 Understand the importance of consuming a variety of nutrient dense foods and beverages in moderation.

3.NPA.2.1 Identify the sources of a variety of foods.

3.NPA.2.2 Categorize beverages that are more nutrient dense.

3.NPA.2.3 Recognize appropriate portion sizes of foods for most Americans.

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EX.3.L.1 Understand basic functions of the human body.

EX.3.L.1.1 Identify basic functions of the human body (e.g. eating, breathing, moving, sleeping).

EX.3.L.1.2 Identify basic needs of the human body (e.g. food, water, rest, protection).

EX.3.L.1.3 Understand how the functions and basic needs of the human body are essential for life.

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This article gives a brief breakdown on added sugars and how to consume in moderation and options for better choices. This is a really child friendly article that keeps it simple, yet meaningful.

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This article talks about food facts and really connects to the learning concept of being able to identify foods high in calcium and low in added sugars.

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This video is an amazing and simple resource for the students to get a visual and verbal understanding of MyPlate, what it is, and how it works.

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This image shows each category of MyPlate along with a breakdown of food examples for each group. This is a informative packed visual for the students, and is engaging with colors.

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This video gives a great perspective from a real world professional on healthy choices and information about how food affects your body!

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Eat the Rainbow! | Nutrition Lesson for Kids

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This video identifies nutrient dense foods, what it is and what it means to be "nutrient dense", and examples. Engaging for the students to follow along with.

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What Are Nutrients - What Is Nutrient Density - What Are Nutrient Dense Foods?

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This video shows how and why breakfast is important. It's short and concise, and breaks down the basics of a healthy breakfast.

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An official website of the United States Government.

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This image reflects how nutrient dense and less nutrient dense foods "add up" in your belly, and how "full and satisfied" they can make you based on the amount you consume.

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This video is a really cool way to give students a glimpse inside the body and how food is used to energy through the digestion process!

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Learning Target: Students will differentiate between nutrient dense and non-nutrient dense foods and beverages.

Strategy: Examples and Non-Examples

Resource: Edutopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeqSBQg9GNA

Outline of Learning Experience: Using the card sort strategy, the students will be provided with a series of images portraying examples and non-examples of a variety of common nutrient dense and non-nutrient dense food and beverages. Students will separate images under the appropriate column of a t-chart.

My curated resources to use: "Talk to a Dietician" and Nutrient Dense Overview" videos.

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Solidifying Core Concepts With Examples and Non-Examples

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Learning Target: Students will build a balanced meal using examples from the 5 food groups represented on MyPlate.

Strategy: Interactive Stations (hands-on/manipulative stations)

Resource: Prodigy https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/station-rotation

Outline of Learning Experience: Using 5-6 interactive stations and separating students into 5-6 groups, students will rotate through stations representing each MyPlate food group: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, dairy, and beverages. At each station, they explore sample foods (pictures, magazine cut outs, grocery store flyers) and select items to build their own balanced meal on a paper plate or card stock.

My curated resources to use: "MyPlate" visual and "MyPlate Overview" video

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Learning Target: Students will demonstrate how food is used as an energy and fuel source for the body through digestion.

Strategy: Jigsaw Method

Resource: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/jigsaw-teaching-strategy/

Outline of Learning Experience: Students will divide into even groups and each takes on a role such as mouth, stomach, muscles, and determine how nutrients are broken down and used for energy, movement and growth. Students then teach other groups on what they learned/discovered, and connect each piece of the puzzle to how food is used as energy in the body.

My curated resources to use: "The Digestive System Breakdown" video

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This cooperative learning strategy has been around for decades, but how well do you really know it?
Say "Jigsaw" in some teaching circles and no one will bat an eyelash. It's one of those techniques that has been with us so long, it is no longer seen as new. When considering methods to share in my collection of instructional strategies, I ignored it for a long time because I assumed most people already knew how to use it. Still, I figured it was worth including at some point.

When I finally sat down to review the steps of Jigsaw, I came across a few surprises.

Although Jigsaw is typically presented as just one in a number of cooperative learning strategies, its origin story has little to do with academics. The strategy was developed by social psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1971 in response to the racial turmoil caused by recent school desegregation in Austin, Texas. "Long-standing suspicion, fear, and distrust between groups produced an atmosphere of turmoil and hostility," Aronson recalls on his website, The Jigsaw Classroom. "Fist-fights erupted in corridors and schoolyards across the city. The school superintendent called me in to see if we could do anything to help students get along with one another."

Rather than take a crisis management approach to the situation, which they believed would only put a band-aid on the problem, Aronson and his colleagues wanted a solution that was more organic, something built into the structure of students' everyday learning. What they came up with was Jigsaw, an instructional approach that required students to learn from each other, rather than from the teacher. Because students in a Jigsaw classroom could not succeed without one another, they had to learn to get along. "Learning from each other gradually diminishes the need to try to out-perform each other because one student's learning enhances the performance of the other students instead of inhibiting it, as is usually the case in most competitive, teacher-oriented classrooms."

For a more thorough understanding of the strategy and its history, read the Jigsaw Classroom's Jigsaw Basics white paper.

Although cooperative learning in general has been proven to have a strong positive impact on learning (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001), researchers have found that Jigsaw in particular improves students' social-emotional learning. In studies comparing Jigsaw with traditional direct instruction, students taught with the Jigsaw method demonstrated increased feelings of autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation (Hänze & Berger, 2007). Another study comparing Jigsaw with cooperative learning that didn't include interdependence (a hallmark of Jigsaw) found that the Jigsaw students demonstrated improved attitudes toward their peers and reduced indicators of racial prejudice (Walker & Crogan, 1998).

Many teachers are looking for ways to help students become more independent learners who also function well in groups. If done correctly, Jigsaw can fulfill all of those needs without ever losing academic rigor.

As a teacher, I never received any formal training in this strategy, and when I tried it, I found it didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped. After studying the steps again, I realized I was organizing my groups the wrong way. Plus, I never bothered to give the quiz at the end.

Anyway, here's a video overview of the steps. If you're new to the strategy, this will show you how to do it. If, like me, you've tried it without success, this may help you fine-tune:

Want these steps written down? Click here to download a free copy (will open in a new window).

I had no clue about this! Since the original Jigsaw strategy was developed, other educators have improved on it with their own variations (Coffey, n.d):

Jigsaw II has all students read all of the material, but then specialize in one area for their expert groups. Then, when quiz time comes, students' individual scores are averaged within each group to arrive at a group score, which is then compared with other groups. This encourages groups to work harder to ensure that all members learn.

Jigsaw III builds in a group review before the final quiz.

Jigsaw IV adds a few extra components to Jigsaw III: The teacher starts by introducing the material, quizzes are given to the expert groups, and a re-teaching period is built in to address material that wasn't taught well in cooperative groups.

I should mention that clear information on these three variations was very challenging to find; with that in mind, I believe there's a need for a well-written set of instructions to help teachers give each variation a try.

So how do you like them apples? Kind of makes you want to get Jiggy with it, no? (Sorry, I couldn't help it. It was sitting right there.) If you have experience with Jigsaw and have insights or tips to add, please comment below. If you have questions about implementation, let's hear those, too.

Jiggy. ♥

References:

Coffey, H. (n.d.). Jigsaw (Educator's guides: North Carolina digital history). Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-eg/4584#noteref5

Hänze, M., & Berger, R. (2007). Cooperative learning, motivational effects, and student characteristics: An experimental study comparing cooperative learning and direct instruction in 12th grade physics classes. Learning and Instruction, 17(1), 29-41. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475206001174

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Silver, H. F., Strong, R. W., & Perini, M. J. (2007). The strategic teacher: Selecting the right research-based strategy for every lesson. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Walker, I. (1998). Academic performance, prejudice, and the jigsaw classroom: New pieces to the puzzle. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 8(6), 381-393. Retrieved from http://uwf.edu/svodanov/AS/Jigsaw.pdf

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4 Things You Don't Know About the Jigsaw Method

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This cooperative learning strategy has been around for decades, but how well do you really know it?

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This will give the students a chance to experience different cultures and school lunches around the world. The article will also help to strengthen literacy skills.

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More than one-third of kids in America are obese or overweight. In 2013, the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools, served 5.1 billion lunches, Bloomberg reports. The quality of these lunches must somehow correlate to the health of America's youth, considering more than 32 million children are served NSLP every day.

Parents could model better eating habits and stock their crispers with fresh fruit and vegetables, but a viable starter solution might begin at lunchtime. Sweetgreen, a healthy quick-serve restaurant that values local and organic ingredients, clarified disparity between American student lunches and those of other countries by photographing typical school lunches from around the world. The visuals are eye-opening.

A representative for the company told The Huffington Post that to create these mock meals, Sweetgreen evaluated different government standards for school lunch programs and compared the data to real photos from students who had posted on several social media platforms. Because school lunches can vary by region, it's important to note that the images below aren't exact representations of a country's school lunch, but offer a resemblance.

The U.S. government acknowledges that our nation's children should not go hungry, but there's less of an emphasis on what exactly our children are being fed. With the great risks associated with being overweight and news that diet may be just as important to mental health as it is to physical health, the state of students' nutrition should be all it takes to improve the quality of the lunch tray -- think fewer chicken nuggets and more produce. But America's got some work to do.

That's not to say the country is apathetic: U.S. government sectors are making strides to improve the current condition of the food we're serving to our youth. For example, by 2013, all 1,300 of New York City's public elementary schools were equipped with a fresh salad bar in their cafeterias (and they'll be getting snazzier in the near future). First lady Michelle Obama is vocal and active about her passion for standardizing healthy meals and snacks for children. And in 2010, President Obama signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which requires child nutrition programs to improve and help schools provide healthier meals, including more fruits and vegetables.

Comparatively, countries have got us beat when it comes to school lunches, nourishing their students with fresher, greener and more nutrient-rich foods that are very much brain foods. There's less fried stuff, less brown mush (see above).

Take a look at the photos of school lunches served around the globe, originally posted on Sweetgreen's Tumblr. Which lunch do you want your child to be eating at school?

Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.

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Michelle Obama hplifestyle Taste school lunches obesity in america

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Photos Of School Lunches From Around The World Put America To Shame

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Which country's lunch would you want to be eating?

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Students will use to follow along with the "Talk to a Registered Dietician" video.

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Breaks down how to determine a beverages across the spectrum. Also used to strengthen literacy skills.

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When it comes to making healthful choices, beverages are just as important as the foods we eat. Many beverages can contribute unnecessary nutrients and may be inappropriate for certain age groups. Promote good health by selecting the best choices for you with the following four tips.

Drink Plenty of Refreshing Water

Water does the body good. It helps your muscles and brain stay hydrated for optimal physical and mental performance. How much water you need depends on your age, size and activity level.

Children 1 to 3 years old need between 1 and 4 cups of water daily. This gradually increases throughout childhood. Adults, and particularly more active people, need more fluids.

Drink Nutrient-Rich Dairy and Fortified Beverages

The calcium in dairy foods helps to build and maintain healthy bones, teeth and muscles. It also may help lower the risk of high blood pressure. When choosing dairy or plant-based beverages, the best choices vary depending on age.

Between 1 and 2 years of age, unflavored, pasteurized whole milk is recommended. There is no need for special beverages such as "toddler milk" or "growing up milk."

Fat-free or low-fat dairy options are recommended for most children over 2 years of age, as well as adults.

While there are a variety of plant-based beverages available in today's market, fortified soy milk is the only option considered to be nutritionally similar to cow's milk. Options such as almond, rice and oat milk aren't recommended for children and adolescents. For those who choose plant-based beverages, select unsweetened varieties to limit added sugars.

Drink a Maximum of 4 to 6 ounces of Juice Per Day

While 100% juice can be a great source of several nutrients, whole fruits and vegetables are a much better option. Actual food tends to be more satisfying, plus you get the added value of dietary fiber and phytonutrients from the peel and pulp.

Avoid or limit "fruit drinks" which often contain added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners, unlike 100% fruit juice.

Drink Other Beverages with Care

Soft drinks, sweetened teas and many sports and "energy" drinks can be high in added sugars, calories and sometimes caffeine - none of which are recommended for children and adolescents, and adults should choose with care.

For adults of legal drinking age, alcoholic drinks may be a source of empty calories and are not nutrient dense.

Recommendations for Infants

Breastmilk or formula is the only beverage recommended for infants younger than 6 months. Between 6 and 12 months of age, a small amount of water may be included throughout the day.

Cow's milk, plant-based beverages, juice and sweetened beverages (such as regular or diet soda) are not recommended for children younger than 12 months.

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For a healthy weight, it's important for adults to balance physical activity with food and beverage intake. While food choices are important, there's increasing evidence that many of us are drinking our way to weight problems, too.