C&Pa Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Hauora & Physical Education 4
Similar to a number of issues raised in the teaching of physical education in primary schools, the area of ‘Food and Nutrition’ can be a real minefield and one that needs to be navigated in a positive and affirming way.
While the learning area of ‘Food and Nutrition’ links in primarily with the ‘Personal health and physical development strand’ of the Health and PE curriculum, in which students develop the knowledge, understandings, skills, and attitudes that they need in order to maintain and enhance their personal well-being and physical development, you can also draw from other HPE strands depending on the goals of your lesson/plans.
The Learning Outcomes for this module are as follows:
- to understand the legislative requirements for health education consultation and food and nutrition policy in primary schools
- to explore how contemporary notions of food and nutrition have influenced the way both adults and children understand and interpret the information about food and nutrition that they receive;
- to take part in a series of activities suitable for a classroom working at Curriculum level 2 or 3;
- to organise effective plans for health-focused lessons and units of learning based upon the photo series Daily Bread by Gregg Segall;
- to explore a range of ‘Food and Nutrition’ resources that might be useful in primary school setting.
What you need to keep in mind when covering ‘Food and Nutrition’ with ākonga is what they do and do not have control over. Many children have no control over what they eat and many families do not have much choice except what is financially available to them. Please do not make nutrition about causing shame around what is in lunch boxes or what they eat at home. Rather it is about empowering ākonga to be able to have a healthy relationship with food and to how it can fuel their body to be the very best it can be.
Health education policy
At least once every two years, Boards of Trustees are required to produce a written statement about how the school will implement Health Education under the requirements of the Education and Training Act 2020. In order to do this, schools must:
- Inform the school community about the content of the Health Education components of the curriculum; and
- Consult with members of the school community regarding the way in which the school should implement health education; and
- Describe, in broad terms, the Health Education needs of the school’s students.
Consultation with the community about the Health Education programme offers schools and health educators valuable opportunities to:
- Refine and revise Health Education programmes – based on community needs and interest
- Assist in the development of well-being-related school policies
- Provide opportunity for students, teachers, parents and whānau to contribute to and enhance learning in Health Education
- Raise the profile of Health Education in the school and wider community.
How to create a health education policy
The link below will take you to a document from 2017 (Consulting with the Community: Best Practice Ideas and Resources to Support Community Consultation for Health Education by New Zealand Health Education Association, 2017) which provides guidelines to schools about how they might carry out their consultation on health education within their communities.
While you might not be involved in the formation of the health policy or programmes when you start your teaching career in primary classrooms, it is imperative that you are aware that you are responsible for ensuring that the lessons and units of work that you plan align to the health policy statements that Boards and school communities develop.
Food and Nutrition: Issues
Reference:
Kelly, S., & Swinburn, B (2015). Childhood obesity in New Zealand. New Zealand Medical Journal, 128 (6).
- How is obesity measured?
- Is there an issue with the current Food Pyramid model?)
- What has influenced children’s levels of participation in physical activity? Please think beyond the “screen time” answer?
- What do you know about the paleo diet or other ways of life that subscribe to more pre-industrialised models?)
- What are the financial implication for families and individuals in being health conscious? What role could the government play in this respect?
Planning and Teaching Nutrition in the Classroom
In the New Zealand Curriculum there are two key themes that come through for teaching nutrition: promoting health of individuals, and promoting community wide health. As with other curriculum areas, Achievement Objectives relating to nutrition are purposefully non prescriptive to allow kaiako to plan and teach content around food and nutrition that takes individual and community culture, habits and needs into account and places these at the centre of learning.
Children will develop:
- knowledge and understanding of the nutrition that people across all age groups require for growth and development;
- understanding of how nutrition, exercise, and well-being are related;
- knowledge and understandings of the cultural significance of food and of rituals associated with food and nutrition;
- knowledge, understandings, and skills for selecting and preparing food and eating patterns that reflect health-enhancing attitudes towards nutrition;
- knowledge of the costs associated with buying and preparing food and the skills necessary to meet nutritional needs on a limited budget;
- skills needed to prepare food successfully and safely at a personal level and as a shared responsibility.
Ministry of Education (1999, p. 40)
Pedagogy for Teaching Nutrition
As with other curriculum areas, when teaching food nutrition it is important that ākonga are active participants in their learning.
This also means creating learning experiences that reflect community culture and foods to allow allow students to see themselves in their learning. Learning positive nutrition behaviours during school ages can create habits that can last for life, and even influence the health of future generations (Uzşen et al, 2019).