ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Needs Assessment/Rational

1. Increase awareness of healthy eating habits to prevent long-term health problems. 2. Increase knowledge of how prevalent diabetes is in the Native American population. 3. Build on the students’ strength of applied problems, as identified by the students’ Woodcock Johnson III Test of Student Achievement. 4. Increase the students’ written language skills, because the Woodcock Johnson III Test of Student Achievement indicates they are all achieving below grade level in written language. This will also help them progress on their IEP written language goals and objectives.

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding: 1) The saying ‘you are what you eat’ is true, because what you eat has a huge impact on your life. 2) One way to improve your health is to reduce the amount of sugar that you consume. 3) Statistics have shown that the Native American people have higher incidents of being diabetic. 4) The computer is a wonderful tool, and can be used for more then just fun and games. Goal(s): Students will effectively communicate their questions by email to a doctor for answers Students will research the causes of diabetes by searching the Internet, emailing questions to a doctor, and researching books on the topic. Students will write a short report from their research using Microsoft Word. The students will calculate the amount of sugar they consume based on their weekly pop drinking habits. Students will conduct an anonymous staff survey related to consumption of pop.

Questions Answered

Essential questions: What can I do as a student to prevent diabetes? Why do more Native American people get diabetes? Why would a person who has diabetes drink diet pop? How much sugar do I actually consume when I drink pop? Objectives: Given background knowledge of how diabetes affects the Native American People, the students will list at least 6 causes and effects of their actions as young people using a t-table to tabulate their answers. Given a formula to calculate the amount of sugar, the students will calculate how much sugar they consume weekly if they continue to drink the same amount of pop daily. When assigned to create a staff survey in Microsoft Word with graphics, the student will successfully design a user-friendly survey. When conducting the student-designed survey, the students will successfully complete it by obtaining data from 90% or more of the surveys. Given the results of the staff survey, the students will graph the results using Microsoft Excel, with 3 or less errors in tabulating the results. Given the results of the staff survey, student research, and email answers from the doctor, the student will write a short research paper (4 or more paragraphs) using Microsoft Word containing 3 or less errors in punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer) will provide evidence of understanding? Matching activities and simple recall worksheets to reinforce foundational knowledge. What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance) will provide evidence of understanding? As part of the opening daily routine, students will journal questions that relate to our diabetes project. Also in the beginning of each daily project we will complete a KWL (what I know, What I want to learn, what I have learned) chart to track learning and provide students the opportunity to direct their own learning What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product) will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding? 1) Students will create a staff survey, hand out the survey, and chart the survey results, after all the results are charted, the students will include the learned information in the school newspaper as well as hand out the survey results to participating staff. They will also make a poster of the results and display it for public viewing in the school. 2) Students will then brainstorm questions that they want to email a doctor and then actually email a doctor the questions. 3) Students will create a t-chart listing the causes and effects of their unhealthy habits and how they will affect their health later. 4) Students will calculate the amount of sugar they consume on a weekly basis drinking pop. 5) Students will research and write a short research paper on diabetes. What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment) of understanding will you collect? 1) Work samples of each individual student collected during the steps of the projects. 2) KWL charts that will be collected. 3) Journal entries. 4) Self assessment with rubric on participation. 5) Highly movativated student chooses the diabetic study as a foundation as for his science fair project. 4) Teacher observation of student progress.

Instructional Strategies

Students will use inquiry-base learning strategy to answer the questions: What can I do as a student to prevent diabetes? Why do more Native American people get diabetes? Why would a person who has diabetes drink diet pop? How much sugar do I actually consume when I drink pop? By involving the students in seeking the answers to these questions through researching, conducting surveys, compiling data, and drawing conclusions students will understand the answers to the questions. This process results in the students realizing the impact that their early life styles have throughout their life. Inquiry based learning is effective with Native American students because a majority of them are visual and kinesthetic learners. All of the students participating in this project are of Native American descent, who attend a Native American Boarding School. Cooperative learning supports inquiry based strategies and hands on learning. Through this inquiry based project, the students personalize the conclusions by making healthy lifestyle changes.