Resource+1

= Resource 1: Interactive Quiz and Fact sheet =

**//Resource Reference://**
The European Food Information Council. (2006). 10 Healthy eating tips for kids. Retrieved 28 September, 2010 from [] (Click on the PDF link on the left-hand-side page)

Sourced from the European Food Information Council’s website (1996), Resource 1 comprises of two components—an interactive quiz and a fact sheet, which would be highly useful as a learning resource for students and teachers alike. Titled //10 Healthy eating tips for kids//, the resource outlines key considerations which are necessary in order for students to make healthy food choices. The quiz component poses to students 10 statements about their personal food choices, to which they must select an appropriate multiple choice answer. For example, students are asked to reflect on their daily fruit intake. Students in turn are able to discover the extent to which the food choices they make constitute healthy, nutritional choices, by totaling the scores designated to each response. The fact sheet further supports students’ learning by providing factual information about the health implications of making particular food choices, as related to the content in the quiz.

By means of prompting students to reflect on their personal food choices, and explaining why it is importance to making healthy food choices, the resource initiates students’ thinking about the core concepts embedded in the PDHPE focus outcome, ‘PHS2.12: Discuss the factors influencing personal health choices’ (Board of Studies, 2007, p. 32). That is, students are supported to develop an understanding of healthy food choices because the connection between the ‘need for good health practices’ and students' own lives has been made clearly explicit. In this way, the resource upholds the importance of rendering learning significant to learners by not only drawing on their prior knowledge, but moreover, making connections between the nature of the work at hand and the context of the students’ own lives (NSW Department of Education, 2003, p. 14). Furthermore, considering the resource advises students about how they could modify their food choices to ensure their optimal health, it encourages students to recognise that they are in control of their own health through the choices they make, which is a central concept of the focus outcome.

A further reason the resource is valuable in supporting students’ learning about healthy food choices is that it presents the concepts involved in a non-confronting manner, in recognition of the need for all students to feel comfortable engaging with the resource. The need to ensure this is integral considering that ‘healthy food choices’ is identified as a ‘sensitive issue’ in the PDHPE syllabus (NSW DET, 2008, para. 4), because students who struggle with weight-related issues, or do not eat healthily may feel embarrassed if the topic is explored in an insensitive way. The resource thus supports the learning needed to create the multimodal text, as students must have a conceptual understanding of healthy food choices in order to create an effective healthy eating advertisement which persuades viewers of the importance of eating fruit.

Therefore, the aspect of literacy which could be explored in the resource is the value of factual descriptions in outlining information to readers which will help them to grasp a given topic (Winch, 2003, pp. 86-87). The factual information the resource provides about healthy food choices would assist students to establish an understanding of the knowledge underlying the topic, through encouraging students to recognise the relationship between healthy food choices and their own healthy growth and development. Students can analyse the facts presented in the resource in terms of their information value, and therein, evaluate the extent to which they offer a strong reason for making healthy food choices. The resource can hence be considered useful as a factual text, as it is accessible to young readers and extends and challenges their knowledge of the world, rather than simply reconstructing their observation of it (Unsworth, 1991, p. 207). Thus, 10 Healthy eating tips for kids as a resource would be conducive to students’ learning about healthy food choices due to its engaging and informative presentation of key concepts. **References** Board of Studies. (2007). //Personal development, health and physical education K-6 syllabus//. Sydney: Author.

NSW Department of Education and Training. (2008). //Nutrition//. Retrieved 1 September, 2010 from [] NSW Department of Education. (2003). //Quality teaching in NSW public schools: Discussion paper//. Professional Support and Curriculum Directorate, May 2003. []. Unsworth, L. (1991). Linguistic Form and the Construction of Knowledge in Factual Texts for Primary School Children, //Educational Review//, 43(2), pp. 201-212. Winch, G. (2003). //Growing Up with Grammar: 4//. Frenchs Forrest: New Frontier Publishing.

-Monica Mizzi