This message and lesson plan is from our Children’s Participation in Eye Health and the Promotion of Good Vision resource book for teachers and educators. Read more about the book and download it now!
Message Three
To have a balanced, healthy diet eat different foods of a variety of kinds. Go, Grow and Glow for strong bodies and healthy eyes.
Learning Objectives
- Children will know and feel able to share the message on Balanced Diet.
- Children can describe what foods make up a Balanced Diet and why it is vital for good eye health.
- Children have conducted a dialogue that demonstrates accurate knowledge about the importance of a Balanced Diet and what it is.
- Children have reflected on the session.
- Children have planned a good question to ask at home about eating habits in the community where they live.
Preparation: Be familiar with the quiz questions and adapt them, if necessary. To increase participation, write (or print) out the questions and let the children interview each other. You may want to replace Grow, Glow and Glow with the food groups more commonly used in the curriculum for example: Energy Foods, Protecting Foods and Body Building Foods.
Steps
- Introductory activities, e.g. an icebreaker, game or The Memory Line.
- Learn the Balanced Diet message with actions too.
- Activity: Using the Think-Pair-Share Method, ask children to think about this question and then discuss it in pairs and in a group: ‘When someone says ‘Balanced Diet’, what do you think about?’
- Quiz: Ask the whole group these questions then check their answers, giving them the correct answer when needed. Repeat the exercise and ask the children to test each other in pairs or small groups. Optionally, use the Vote with Your Feet method.
Reflection Circle
In a circle, the children say in turn what they learned and enjoyed about this session.
Closing Activity
Repeat the message together and ask those that know it to share with classmates, friends and family. Encourage children to ask this Good Question in their families:
Why is it that some children in our community do not have a balanced diet?
Extension Activities
Tell the children this story:
A teacher teaches the message about Balanced Diet to a group of children and they practice it. After school they go home and they teach the message to a group of friends. Neighbours see them and ask them what they are doing. The children tell them. The children go back to the school and tell the teacher the story of sharing the message with the other children and the neighbours. The teacher rewards them with a green ribbon. Everyone repeats the message and sings the song.
- Divide the children into groups of 5 or 6 and ask them to take it in turns to retell the story, or develop the story as a role-play. Let them do this on their own.
- Select one or two examples of the role-plays to watch and discuss.
Follow-on: Children can perform role-plays at school or in the community and make other role- plays on this topic with their friends.
Tell the children this story:
A sister meets her brother and asks, ‘How are you?’ Her brother says that he is feeling tired and he has had many small illnesses and that he does not know how to get his energy back. He concludes by telling his sister how well she seems. Sister asks what he is eating and drinking in a day. Continue the dialogue in which it becomes clear that the person feeling well is having a much healthier, balanced diet that includes a variety of colourful, fresh and natural food. Encourage the children to make this dialogue funny and with good messages about a Balanced Diet!
- Divide the children into pairs and ask them to develop the dialogue. Let them do this on their own.
- Select one or two examples of the dialogues to watch and discuss.
Follow-on: After checking that the facts are correct in the dialogue, encourage children to perform it at home or in the community. They can also teach other children the facts to use in the dialogues so that they can work out a dialogue too.