Graphing a Healthy Lifestyle

Summary

Students will, over a week, record the amount of time they spend sleeping, attending school, watching T.V., exercising and doing homework. At the end of the week the students will graph all of their information and discuss how sleep impacts their learning. The graphs will be used to discuss daily habits and ways to improve overall health.

Materials

• 1 notebook for each student
  
• graphing paper for each student
  
• 1 poster board for each student
  
• markers and/or crayons

Student Prior Knowledge

Students need to know how to record data. Students need to know basic graph making steps.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will learn of the habits they have in their lifestyles. They will come out of this lesson with the information to change bad habits and increase their habits to a healthier lifestyle.

Instructional Procedures

Step 1-Teacher will explain the information students will be collecting throughout the week.
Step 2 - The teacher will explain that after one week of recording data, students will create a graph.
Step 3 - Students will record information each day for a week in a notebook.
Step 4 - At the end of the week, students will select a graph (bar graph, pictograph, pie graph, etc.) to illustrate their information. They will do a first draft on a small piece of graph paper and then transfer it to a poster board.
Step 5 - Take two class periods to have students show and discuss their graph.
Step 6 - Have students talk about and write down ways to improve their overall health.

Strategies for Diverse Learners

Special needs learners could focus on recording just a couple of the activities; e.g., time spent sleeping and watching T.V.

To challenge students, have them figure out the percent of time spent doing each activity.

Extensions

After the first graph has been done and discussed, I would have the students take another week with the same activity and see if their habits have changed.

Assessment Plan

Students will be graded on the notes they take in their notebook, their first draft and the graph on the poster paper.

Bibliography

Integrating Health into Math, http://hyper.vcsun/HyperNews/sharbet/get/hsc436/integrate99/11.html This site showed many ways to integrate math curriculum and health curriculum.