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This hands-on classroom activity invites students to complete a meal by choosing additional foods that reflect the guidance of Canada’s Food Guide. Students evaluate real-life meal examples and consider what’s already present, what could be added, and how food choices can be based on hunger, preferences, and available options.
What’s included:
This activity supports the Lunch Box Guide Program.
Language:
English
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Curriculum connections
This activity supports Alberta’s Physical Education and Wellness (PEW) curriculum for grades 4 to 6.
|
Grade |
Organizing Idea |
Learning Outcome |
|
Healthy Eating |
Students examine nutrition and explain how it informs decision making about food. |
|
|
Healthy Eating |
Students evaluate aspects of nutrition and examine their benefits to well-being. |
|
|
Healthy Eating |
Students examine access to food and its effect on making decisions related to nutrition. |
✍🏽 Having students reflect through a journal entry or exit slip can help reinforce key writing outcomes, especially those connected to the Writing and Conventions and Organizing Ideas sections of the English Language Arts and Literature curriculum.
Try these classroom discussion questions!
✨ This curriculum connection guide was developed in collaboration with a curriculum consultant. The activity can support a wide range of learning outcomes across K–12. We invite you to adapt them based on your students’ needs – no one knows your learners better than you. ✨
Why assess example meals rather than student food records?
💛 Students have reported that it can be stressful to track and be graded on the foods they eat, especially when they may have little control over what foods are available in the home. Applying learning to general rather than personal examples creates safety for learners in this activity.
Research has started to connect food tracking activities with weight preoccupation and disordered eating behaviours in vulnerable adolescents. Our team is committed to creating resources that enhance learning without unintended negative impacts on mental health.
*Pinhas et al. Trading health for a healthy weight: the uncharted side of healthy weights initiatives. Eat Disord 2013;21:109-116.
