Lesson: One Kid Can Make a Difference NEW!
Students will learn about how simple, smart decisions greatly impact their health, the well-being of their community, and the preservation of the natural environment around them.
OBJECTIVE
Health Goal: Students will learn about nutrition and making healthy food and drink choices.
Science Goal: Students will learn that their choices affect the environmental health of the planet.
Language Arts Goal: Students will pledge to make positive choices for one month. At the end of one month, students will write a personal response to the assignment.
MATERIALS
One Kid Can Make a Difference Printable (PDF), pencil, paper
DIRECTIONS
1. Ask: What does it mean to make a choice? What are some choices that we make every day? (e.g. what clothes to wear, how to behave, what foods to eat, etc.)
2. Tell students that the choices they make every day matter. Their choices can make them healthier, make their community a nicer place to live, and make the planet cleaner. Tell students that their choices don’t have to be big projects. There are simple things kids can do that make a big difference. Share the following examples with students:
GOOD FOR ME
Stop the Soda: Drinking plenty of water will keep you hydrated and give you the energy you need in class and on the playground. Try drinking at least eight 8 oz. glasses of water a day and swap a can of soda for a glass of water to cut down on sugar.1 One 20 oz. bottle of cola contains 17 teaspoons of sugar.2 If you drank one bottle of soda every single day, you would drink more than eight gallons of sugar in one year!
Veg Out: Kids should eat 2 ½ cups of vegetables every day, but not all veggies are created equal. According to the USDA, French fries make up one-fourth of all vegetables eaten by elementary school students. A medium order of fries has 460 calories—that is more than one-fourth of the calories you should get in a whole day!3 Choose orange and dark green veggies, like carrots and broccoli, for the best nutrition.
Sleep Tight: Children ages 7 to 12 need about 10 to 11 hours of sleep every night, but most only get about 9 ½ hours.4 Children who sleep better feel better and do better in school. If you choose to go to bed a little earlier, you will feel a whole lot better.
GOOD FOR MY COMMUNITY
Squish the Litter Bugs: If one kid in our class chose to pick up just one piece of litter every single day, that kid would pick up 365 pieces of litter a year. If all 30 kids in our class did it, we’d pick up 10,950 pieces of litter!
Give Your Time: If you volunteered in the community one Saturday a month for three hours, you would spend 36 hours volunteering in one year. You could participate in a clean-up to help protect the water in your community from pollution. Your actions will have lasting effects far beyond your community, because local water is an important part of the hydrological cycle. Visit www.Surfrider.org to find ways to get involved in your community.
Show Respect: Choosing to be kind and polite is a great way to set a positive example throughout your community, because when someone is nice to you, you want to be nice to others. Just saying “please” and “thank you” makes a real difference to the people you meet.
GOOD FOR OUR PLANET
Fill a bottle, not a landfill: In 2006, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles but only recycled 38, meaning the rest went to landfills.5 If all 30 students in our class drank filtered water from a reusable bottle instead of single-serve bottled water, the class could save 5,010 bottles this year!6
Pack Your Snack: The average school year is 180 days long. If you bring your lunch every school day in a reusable bag, you can save 180 paper bags. If 30 students do it, that’s 5,400 paper bags!7 If you bring a reusable storage containers and utensils, you can save even more.
Bring Your Own Bag: Americans use 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year.8 If you bring a reusable bag to the store just once a week, you’ll save 52 plastic bags a year. If each student does it, we’ll save 1,560 bags.9
3. Invite students to suggest other choices they might make to benefit their health, their community, and the planet. Write student responses on the board.
USING THE PRINTABLE:
4. Distribute the One Kid Can Make a Difference Printable (PDF). Tell students that they will each make three positive choices—one for themselves, one for their community, and one for the planet. They will track their progress for 30 days.
5. Read the “Positive Choices Pledge” at the top of the printable. Have students fill in their three choices and write a sentence about why these choices are important to them. Have students sign and date their pledges.
6. For the next 30 days, have students use the chart to track their progress with each goal. Do a daily “check-in” and have students discuss how they are doing. Allow students to share their feelings about the project and their goals.
7. At the end of 30 days, have students write a one-page essay responding to the assignment. Have them write about what they liked, what they didn’t like, and whether they will continue with their healthy choices goals.
LESSON EXTENSION
Healthy Habits
Tell students that it is easy to make a positive choice for one day. But we need to make positive choices day after day to form healthy habits. Have students discuss how they might continue to make positive choices after the assignment has ended.
1 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283
2 Center for Science in the Public Interest: ‘Liquid Candy’ Report page 17: http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/liquid_candy_final_w_new_supplement.pdf
3 http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/resources/mpk2_lesson3.pdf
4 http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/how-much-sleep-do-children-need?page=5
5 Fishman, Charles. “Message in a Bottle.” Fast Company magazine July 2007: 110.
6 30 x 167 = 5,010
7 30 x 180 = 5,400
8 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/05Rbags.html
930 students x 52 weeks = 1,560
ARTICLE
UNIT PLAN
ONLINE ACTIVITY
