Spreadsheets for dinner

Students will identify spreadsheet terms, create a spreadsheet about nutritional content of foods, and add the columns of the spreadsheet.

A lesson plan for grade 4 Healthful Living

By Laurie Myers

Learn more

• US Department of Agriculture Dietary guidelines for Americans
• Food Timeline What people ate during different historical periods
• School Menu A Flash website for kids about school menus
• Kids World Nutrition Another informational site aimed at kids
• Nutrition Explorations Further information about nutrition aimed at parents or teachers

Related pages

• M&M cafe: Students will be divided into small groups and be required to come up with two balanced meals and one unbalanced meal using breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• Fast food frolics: Students will research nutritional guides from local fast food restaurants. Based on this research, students will compare menus for nutritional values and create healthy and unhealthy meal advertisement posters.
• Tuning in to good nutrition: Advertisers use a number of strategies to get us to buy the foods they are selling. This lesson plan, from the Food for Thought nutrition curriculum, asks students to think about these strategies, how they work, and how by understanding these strategies, they can make informed decisions when they make food purchases.

Related topics

• Learn more about foods, health, menus, nutrition, and nutritional information.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• identify spreadsheet terms: row, column, and cell
• resize the cells, insert data, and add the data in the columns
• be able to integrate technology into other curriculum areas

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

90 minutes

Materials/resources

• nutritional labels from several types of food
• menu planning sheet
• pencils

Technology resources

• spreadsheet program such as AppleWorks, ClarisWorks, or Microsoft Excel
• computer lab
• classroom computers
• internet access

Pre-activities

Students will have a forty minute introduction to spreadsheets in the computer lab. Rows, columns, and cells will be introduced. Students will be shown how to resize the cells and add columns. For practice, students will be given row heights, column widths, and a list of numbers to insert and add.

Activities

1. Together, teacher and students will visit nutrition websites to determine the effect fats, carbohydrates, cholesterol, sodium, and proteins have on your body (see “Learn More” section in the sidebar). The class will discuss that fats should be moderate and cholesterol should be avoided.
2. Students will be given the task of planning a dinner menu. They will be provided with nutritional guidelines such as how much protein their dinner must have and what their cholesterol limit should be. The teacher will model on the board the sort of information the students will be required to look for and what they will have to write down.
3. In groups, students will be given a Menu planner and nutritional labels from several types of foods. The groups will have to plan a dinner that will stay within the nutritional guidelines they have been given.
4. When they are finished planning their meal, students will go to the computer and create a spreadsheet that has columns for food, protein, carbohydrate, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and a row for the totals. Students will add up the columns to show that they stayed within the guidelines.

Assessment

Completed and printed spreadsheets in which the student has stayed within the nutritional guidelines.

Supplemental information

Attachments:
Nutrition sample for students who may have trouble creating a spreadsheet from scratch

Comments

This entire lesson could be completed in a computer lab or in a classroom. Once the introduction to spreadsheets has been done, students could use them for a variety of learning activities.