Teachers Notes:
Food Smart is a website designed to assist and equip students within year 3 and 4
with food smart knowledge in order to assist them in making healthy food choices in their everyday lives. This resource will provide students with an understanding of healthy eating and why it is important as well as teach them the skills for them to independently select the necessary foods require to fuel their bodies.
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This website allows students to investigate, generate and critque Food Production and Food Technologies using a collaborative approach. Students will learn about the importance of healthy eating, food labels and how to read them appropriately to ensure they have an understanding to take responsibility for what they are putting inside their bodies. The students will be required to plan, document various ideas relevant to the topic and their their ideas with their peers.
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Differentiation:
This resources allows teachers to adapt and differentiate the learning activities according to the specific learning needs of the students. This resource can be utilise to test student knowledge and understanding of food production, in particular how to read a food label and how such information is important in order to make health food decisions.
Students are to use this resource in conjunction with other hands on learning activities within a classroom environment to extend their current knowledge of the topic. Students are able to work at their own pace, where they take increasing responsibility for their individual learning and are able to complete the learning activities as many times as they like.
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This resource an also be used by a teacher to guide students through the varying steps in a whole class environment to engage collaborative engagement taking a more teacher-centred approach.
The Australian Curriculum: Technologies, Design and Technologies aims to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to ensure students individually and collaboratively are able to:
- investigate, generate and critique innovative and ehtical designed solutions for sustainable
- use design and systems thinking to generate design ideas and communicate these to a range of audiences
- evaluate processes and designed solutions and transfer knowledge and skills to new situations
- produce designed solutions suitable for a range technologies contexts by selecting and manipulating a range of materials, systems, components, tools and equipment creatively, competently and safely; and managing processes
(ACARA, 2016)
Year 3 and 4 Content Descriptions relevant to this resource:
-Generate, develop and communicate design ideas and decisions using appropriate technical terms and graphical representation techniques (ACTDEP016)
Elaboration: planning, sharing and documenting creative ideas and processes using digital tools such as a class blog or collaborative document
-Investigate food and fibre production and food technologies used in modern and traditional societies (ACTDEK012)
Elaboration: investigating the labels on food products to determine how the information provided contributes to healthy eating, for example ingredients and nutrition panels
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Whole Class Blog:
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Prior to the introduction of food and fibre production and food technologies the students explored, planned and designed the creation of a whole class blog in order to share and communicate their findings, learnings and understandings about a chosen topic.
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The class blog is entirely for student use. Two students each week have been assigned to write a blog entry about anything relevant to food production and food technologies, however any student is able to write a blog entry at any one time. This process will enable communication to be continous and allow the class teacher to monitor and evaluate the students contributions and current understandings in order to acknowledge what remains unclear. A few starting entries were created to assist and motivate the students to share their perspective.
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General Capabilities:
Literacy:
Comprehending texts through listening, reading and viewing:
- Comprehend texts
- Navigate, read and view learning text areas
- Interpret and analyse learning text areas
Composing texts through speaking, writing and creating:
- Compose texts
- Compose spoken, written, visual and multimodal learning area texts
Text Knowledge:
- Use knowledge of text structures
Visual Knowledge:
- Understand how visual elements create meaning
Word Knowledge:
- Understand learning area vocabulary
Numeracy:
Using spatial reasoning:
- Visualise 2D and 3D objects
- Interpret maps or diagrams
Interpreting statistical information:
- Interpret data displays
Intercultural Understanding:
Recognise culture and develop respect:
- Investigate culture and cultural identity
- Explore and compare cultural knowledge, beliefs and practices
Critical and Creative Thinking:
Inquiring - identifying, exploring and organising information and ideas:
- Identify and clarify information and ideas
- Organise and process information
- Pose questions
Generating ideas, possibilities and actions:
- Imagine possibilities and connect ideas
- Seek solutions and put ideas into actions
- Consider alternatives
Reflecting on thinking and processing:
- Reflect on processes
Analyse, synthesising and evaluating reasoning and procedures:
- Apply logic and reasoning
Australian Curriculum: Technologies Key Ideas
Overarching idea (Creating preferred futures):
The Technologies curriculum provides students with opportunities to consider how solutions that are created now will be used in the future. Students will identify the possible benefits and risks of creating solutions. They will use critical and creative thinking to weigh up possible short- and long-term impacts.
As students progress through the Technologies curriculum, they will begin to identify possible and probable futures, and their preferences for the future. They develop solutions to meet needs considering impacts on liveability, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. Students will learn to recognise that views about the priority of the benefits and risks will vary and that preferred futures are contested.
Thinking in technologies (Systems thinking):
In Design and Technologies, the success of designed solutions includes the generation of ideas and decisions made throughout design processes. It requires students to understand systems and work with complexity, uncertainty and risk. Students recognise the connectedness of and interactions between people, places and events in local and wider world contexts and consider the impact their designs and actions have in a connected world (ACARA,2016).
Design thinking:
Design thinking involves the use of strategies for understanding design needs and opportunities, visualising and generating creative and innovative ideas, planning, and analysing and evaluating those ideas that best meet the criteria for success. Design thinking underpins learning in Design and Technologies. Design processes require students to identify and investigate a need or opportunity; generate, plan and realise designed solutions; and evaluate products and processes. Consideration of economic, environmental and social impacts that result from designed solutions are core to design thinking, design processes and Design and Technologies (ACARA, 2016).