Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery for students with Hearing Impairments
a collaboration of the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Barton College, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Interpreters, Inc.

For Teachers!

Calories, Energy for exercise and life.

Note to the Teacher

Overview

This lesson helps the students calculate the number of calories they need each day. The calculation considers their body size, gender, age, and how active they are. The students collect their personal information and put it in web page calculators. 

Objectives

The students will calculate the number of calories they need each day. The students will learn the impact of exercise on their daily caloric needs. The students will be able to determine if their daily caloric intake meets or exceeds their daily need.

Prerequisites

The students need to be able to convert feet and inches to inches.

Materials needed:

A scale and measuring tape. The students need this to weigh themselves and measure each other's height. Students need to record this information in pounds and inches (not feet!). If you are using centimeters or kilograms, make the necessary changes to the packet before photocopying. 

A reference with the number of calories in specific foods. If you are at a boarding school, make sure to obtain information about the food to be served in the cafeteria the day that you give the homework assignment. Make sure that you have some caloric values for these foods.  

Sample panels of "Nutrition Facts". Use these to show the students where to get the information they need to record in their homework assignment. Also, use these to explain the concept of units, as they pertain to nutrition, to the students.  

The name of a counselor who can help any of your students who may have an eating disorder. We hope that this is not needed, but it is best to be prepared for anything that may happen. During the high school years, students are particularly vulnerable to falling into the pattern of eating disorders. 

Notes:

The student packet is to be used in conjunction with the web pages for this module. The packet contains questions that correspond with each activity that students complete on the web. It also contains a homework assignment. Before beginning this activity, please consider the time frame you wish for the students to complete the module in. It is currently laid out as a two- day unit. If you change the time frame, please note that you may have to rearrange parts of this packet. All of the students' information should be recorded in this packet to ensure the best learning experience possible. 

For activity factor (day one, page three), extra teacher involvement may be needed for some students. Ideally, the hours and minutes should total to 24 hours, but this is not necessary for the factor to be computed. However, it is recommended that the total number of hours does not exceed 24. Encourage the students to remember as much as possible and be as accurate as possible given the choices available. 

For Calculate My Calories (day two, page one and homework assignment), extra teacher involvement will be needed. If you are at a residential school, please have available the nutritional information for the cafeteria food from that day. Make sure that every student has the "Calories (per serving)" and "Servings Eaten" columns as complete as possible. Please try to make information as accurate as possible. Books should be available in your local library that list nutritional data for common foods. Also note that you may wish to print the "Calorie Chart" in landscape mode to allow the chart to fit on one page. 

Note: Most of the questions that accompany each activity are COMPREHENSION questions. Answers will vary on most of these questions. Please be flexible when looking at your students' answers. Also realize that some students may not be able to answer all of the questions. Taylor the questions, as needed, to fit your class. 

What's It All Mean? (day two, page two) contains questions dealing with different eating disorders (including anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating). These questions should be omitted as necessary, depending on the mentality of the class and/or individuals. If you do choose to use these questions, please plan a discussion in which you explain more about these disorders and help the students handle these concepts. 

Developed by
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

Copyright © 1999-2001 by The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

This project is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation.