Food Journal Reflection

                I had an interesting experience keeping my food journal this last two weeks. This was not really a very long time to be working on this, but I do think I learned a few things in the process as I have never done any sort of recording my food and activity level. I learned that health is not really my first concern in my eating habits unfortunately, I think more about convenience and what is readily available at the time or based on habit, I should probably work to change my habits so that they are natural for me. This is similar for my activity level, I do not set time aside to exercise, and I just take activity as part of my normal day. For example, I am a custodian and am on my feet during my whole shift doing heavy lifting, I also make it a habit to walk from place to place when I can, but this is more to save gas than to be healthy. I reckon I ought to try to actually make a point of having a healthy lifestyle for the purpose of health rather than economic purposes; I can’t very well get kids in my class to be healthy so that they can save gas or through heavy grunt labor, both would be illegal. I therefore must model health for its own sake for my students.

                My goal was not to drink as much soda, as soda is not very good for me. I managed to drink no soda during the second week of the class so that was good. I think this goal was a reasonable one as it did not really involve many significant changes in my diet, it just meant taking the one thing out, and I was also motivated by the prospect of saving money. This motivated me more than health did, and I saved ten dollars over that week which was nice. However, like my previous point it would have been better to be motivated by health because that’s what I want to model. Being able to set goals and achieve them is an important skill to teach children, and this is extra important when it is a relevant subject like their own bodies. Having reasonable goals spread across a long period of time so that they can have a good ability to achieve their goals in a way that challenges them but does not discourage them.

                I reckon that this sort of activity can be incorporated into a reading or writing activity so they can reflect and write about their experience in keeping their journal. I could also use this as an assessment method to make sure that the children are learning their lesson about healthy living. I suppose that a calorie counting element can be incorporated into the lesson which could be used to add an element of practically usable mathematics into the math and the health curriculum. While it may take some creative thinking to teach health within the busy schedule of  the typical elementary school class, but it is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.

Post for 7-24-14

[This is Late]

I thought that the groups that went on this day presented some interesting lessons on compliments and self-esteem. I did not really consider these a part of health, and have not really thought much about receiving compliments. I think it is good to receive compliments, but not as good as giving compliments, because that benefits not only the other person but yourself since it makes you more virtuous, and that is always a good thing to do. I think this lesson was good, but it could be very painful and awkward for a child who very much does not like sharing compliments about oneself, I think putting them on the spot to share a compliment could really easily spook them.

Reflection 7/30/14

Today had some interesting discussion around the book, some of which I do not know how I feel about, bu was still nice to hear. My own group put the big sentence "reality is relative" on the top of our paper, and to be honest I don't know what is meant by that. Does this mean that everyone perceives an objectively existent reality differently? Or does it mean that objective reality does not exist and nothing is really true for everyone? If the second is meant I must say that this is false. For example, we know as a scientific fact that the human body can replenish its blood, while the Hmong believe that there is limited blood in the body. They are welcome to believe this, and the fact that they do does not make them less intelligent or less worthy of dignity and respect, to the contrary their steadfastness in their beliefs I believe is an admirable quality. They are wrong however, in an objective way they are incorrect. That was a point of some confusion in class, and I do not think that it disturbs the main point of the book, but it is good to consider in class that for the most part western medicine is correct, as well as the fact that, "western medicine saves lives."

Reflection on Health Class 7/29/14

This may have been the single best class period I have experienced this whole quarter. It was engaging and our activities were concrete and it really modelled how we can teach science in our class, through asking questions and promoting discovery. I also liked the bit about thanking the animals for their body parts being used for science, I have run into the problem of students becoming upset at body parts before, and I think this would be a good way to diffuse it. Great class, I hope we have more like it when we have our science methods class.

Reflection for Monday 7/28/14

I feel like our microteaching was not very good. It was overly complicated and reflected a lack of practice and coordination in planning, because there was a lack of practice and coordination in our planning. This criticism was good to learn from and most of it was good. Of special note was the lack of ethnic food on our chart, which we should have paid attention to more, although it would be impossible to put every food under the sun down, we should have been more holistic. I hope to be able to do better next time I present something to the class.

Health Class #2 reflection

[This is Late]

I thought the class on tuesday was great, it was an interesting exercise on how to make our lesson plans incorporate physical activity. I also thought the part on the form about academic language was interesting, it reminded me of an experience I had. In the spring I worked at a school with a large number of spanish speaking immigrants. I was in an 8th grade science class, and they were talking about properties of matter. The teacher mentioned that matter has mass and some ELL students were very confused, I talked to them about them later and they asked me, "how does the scale measure how much church is in an object?" That was a really interesting experience and goes to show the importance of thinking about academic language in the planning of lessons.

Health reflection class #1

Well, today was an interesting day in health class, I'm glad that I'm done with the book so that I can focus on everything else I have to do for the class. I think the log of food and activity is an interesting assignment, it will be hard for me to pay attention to it as I usually do not, but that will be good for me.I hope to learn lots these two weeks and look forward to hearing everyone elses thoughts on the book, which I thought was very interesting.