Calories in and calories out is a one day lesson that highlights and explains what calories are, where they come from, and how we manage our weight with them.  After learning the basics of calories, students will research how many calories are in a serving of their favorite snack food, and do some math calculations in order to figure out approximately how much time they would need to spend walking and running to burn off the consumed amount.  This is a stand alone lesson/activity or could be easily adapted for an interactive student notebook.

Set

• Show students a Hershey Kiss (real or picture) and ask the following…
  • How do our choices of food and exercise affect our health?
  • What is the connection between food and exercise?
  • Where do we find the calorie information for the foods we’re eating?

  Food provides us with ENERGY in the form of calories, which are found on food labels, for our bodies to burn while we exercise.  Exercise helps us to burn calories to maintain a healthy weight.  So to learn more about calories…

• View the YouTube clip “The Science Behind Food Calories” and complete the questions. Review answers.

• Snack Food Labels
• Laptops/Mobile Devices
• Markers & Glue

Activities

• Review and explain the concepts of Energy Balance and Imbalance and how it affects weight management.
• Illustrate the calorie intake and exercise output concept with the Hershey’s Kiss from earlier.
• Assign students the visual project that can be completed as a poster or as a creative/application entry in their interactive student notebooks.  This will require the laptops or access to calorie/exercise charts to complete this along with some basic algebra skills.
• To reinforce the calorie information or as an assessment, I like to have students complete the “The Day in the Life of a Middle Schooler” chart with my questions.

Attachments

• Calories Lesson and Visual Project (PDF)
• Science Behind the Calories Questions (PDF)
• Key to The Science Behind the Calories (PDF)
• Day in a Life Middle Schooler Chart (PDF)