I’m a huge fan of hands-on activities for a variety of reasons! One of my favorites involves hexagonal thinking blocks. Not only does it provide students with engagement, but it also allows them to communicate, collaborate and think critically when working with the blocks. If you’d like to give this a try, check out the Calories & Exercise Lesson below.
Set
- Assign students the Picture Analysis (under attachments) and then discuss their response upon completion.
- Ask students: What are calories? Where do they come from? Why do we need them?
- View the “Ted-Ed: What is a Calorie?” video to learn more about them. Revisit the above questions and discuss afterwards.
Materials
- iPads or Laptops
- Projector & Screen
- Hex Blocks (cut out ahead of time)
- Colored Pencils or Markers
- EdupProtocol Field Guide Book 2 (affiliate link)
Activities
- Hexagonal Thinking Essential Question: How do calories and exercise affect the body? After watching and discussing a video on the topic of calories, introduce hexagonal thinking by briefly explaining what it is and demonstrating how it’s used. Divide students into small groups of 3-4 so all can participate.
- Students are to read through the hex blocks and try to sort them by categories or headings. Once they’ve sorted the headings, have them read through the remaining hex blocks and try to relate and arrange the terms/concepts to the headings on the large piece of construction paper. Their goal is to make
the strongest connections possible between the hex blocks. Hex blocks that have connections or show a relationship need to touch another hex block on at least one side. Remind them that some of the hex blocks may have multiple connections and they are to try to connect as many blocks as possible in the allotted time. - Here is an EXAMPLE of just one way sorting the blocks could go.
- When finished, have students be ready to explain connections or relationships–see the Assessment 3-2-1 Exit Reflection.
- Once the hex blocks are connected and clusters have been formed, have students glue them in place. Provide each student with a different colored pencil or marker and have create a color coded key in one of the corners.
- Individually, students will complete the Assessment 3-2-1 Exit Reflection directly on the construction paper surrounding the hex block creation.
- Discuss 3-2-1 Reflections as a whole class. Each person must share at least one response from their exit reflection.
- Now it’s time to assign Calories Burned Per Hour By Activity Level Numbers Mania. This project incorporates the Eduprotocols technique called Numbers Mania.
- Basically, each student finds one exercise example that would fit into the activity level and records it in the crowdsourcing chart. Once completed, divide students into groups of 4. I will warn you, the search for crowdsourcing examples can get wild as students are all trying to get their ideas charted before their classmates!
- Choose a leader to create the 4 quadrant Google Slide and invite the other members.
- Each person within the groups a quadrant of the infographic illustrating the activity level, exercises and calories burned per hour in a group slide show. Be sure to label each quadrant and include the calories ranges in the headings. The name of each exercise, the # of calories burned and an image from the Noun Project (make a free account) should be included.
- When all four quadrants are complete, the leader submits it via Google Classroom.
- Bulletin Board: Optional–Print out the charts students make and create a bulletin board or wall display around this topic. I assure you that it will generate interest!
Attachments
- Picture Analysis
- Hex Blocks
- 3-2-1 Exit Reflection
- Calories & Exercise Levels Collection Form/Project
