Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes – Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge
10 minutes – Part B: Sugar Mythbusters
30 minutes – Part C: Questions
10 minutes – Reflection

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Step 1.

Prepare and display the Rethink Your Drink Poster to the class as well as any other additional resource materials needed for the lesson. Once you have displayed the poster, introduce the various beverages by placing a shopping bag in the middle of the room and unpack the items revealing the drink, and discussing the amount of sugar.

Invite the whole class to look at the display of drinks on the table and discuss the types of drinks, when they are consumed, and student preference/s.

Use these leading questions to discuss:

Have you ever had these drinks before?

If so, how often would you drink these? Once a day? Once a week? Once a year?

Encourage the students to think about:

What do you think is inside the drinks?
How much sugar is contained in each drink?

Step 2.

Request two student volunteers to organise the drinks in order from least to most sugar. Then ask the student volunteers to talk about the choices they made and why they chose to organise the drinks in that order.

To encourage whole group engagement, ask the students:

Would they like to change anything?
Which item are you unsure about and why?

Then, facilitate a brief discussion about what changes might be made and why? This is an important part of the session as it gives an opportunity for the students to reflect on their thinking and form their own reasoning. You might find that you will need to readjust the order of the drinks a few times until the class is satisfied with the order.

Step 3.

Refer and use the Rethink Your Drink Poster as a guide to show the amount of sugar in each drink. Rearrange the drinks in order from most to least amount of sugar-based on the information in the poster.

How does the information on the poster compare to the order that students initially put the drinks in?

You can then invite the students to take the ziplock bags and sugar and spoon the sugar into zip lock bags to show the sugar content that each drink contains.
Prepare this as a simple display and then select a small group of students to perform the following tasks:

Write down the product on a sticky note
Write down the number of teaspoons in each item on a sticky note or coloured piece of paper
Tape the top of the zip lock bag together (being careful not to spill any)
Writing a large heading for the display.

Once you have completed this task, ask your students where would be a suitable place to display your learning. You may wish to share this with the school community using newsletters or school social media and create some individual goals relating to the importance of increasing water intake and decreasing consumption of high sugar drinks.

Part B: Sugar Mythbusters: Sugars In Your Lunchbox

Step 1.

Pose the following question to students:

What sugars are hiding in your lunchbox? Let's take a little look inside.

Divide the class into small investigations teams of 3-4 students per team.

Provide each team with a device to take a photo of the item (for hygienic handling of foods in the classroom purposes)
Ask the students to select an item from their own lunchbox to investigate the sugars inside. These items are best handled by the students that brought the lunchbox
A photograph is taken of the item and used in the investigation.

The items can be fruit, juice, snack bars, a range of different food products. Encourage students to photograph foods and drinks not seen at other tables. If possible provide a small number of additional items for students to use (ie. apples, oranges, carrots, etc). It is important to ensure a safe supported space without judgement of students' lunches.

Please ensure that this part of the lesson is undertaken within the food guidelines adhered to in the daily operations of your class, consistent with your school policies, ie. food allergies, and anaphylaxis management policies and procedures. The activity is designed to be used with teacher guidance, the use of photographs, and individuals handling their own food, to assist in reducing the risk of cross-contamination and facilitating all food safety precautions.

Step 2. Under investigation - Natural sugars v’s added processed sugars.

As a class, students will investigate natural sugars and compare them to added processed sugars.
Provide each student with a copy of the Student Worksheet and review the photographs that were taken on the devices that will need to be added to the worksheet.
Lead a discussion on what is natural sugar and what is processed sugar?

Natural sugars occur as fructose (in fruit) and carbohydrates (in bread). They occur naturally in the foods
Processed sugars are added to foods to make them sweet. Sugar is a natural product but it is refined to a super concentrated form, like sugar granules or syrups.

Ask the students to write down what they found, on the space provided in the Student Worksheet. The class will need to write the name of the item, the sugar contained in each item and ensure they are ranked from least to the most amount of sugar.
Encourage the students to use these guiding questions to investigate:

Which item contains natural sugars?
Which item contained added processed sugars?
Did you find natural sugars or were there added sugars?
Which was the highest ranked item and were you shocked by your findings?

Once complete, invite your class to come back together and discuss any new discoveries and wonderings.

Part C: Quiz Questions

Step 1.

Let your class know that during this task they will be asked to be the masters of sugar and use the Filter Your Future Education Project Poster to help guide them to develop a 'Sugar Quiz.' The sugar quiz will include a set of questions that are relevant to their recent discoveries and the current data that Filter Your Future is trying to convey.

Organise and divide the class into teams (four to five students per team) and invite your team of sugar experts to develop one to three quiz questions per group based on the following:

The findings the discovered based on their lunchbox investigation
Sugar content found in drinks as part of the lineup activity
General knowledge about sugar-related health issues and how to prevent them.

Direct students to the Quiz Questions section of the Student Worksheet, and invite them to use this space to record their questions and answers. This worksheet will be implemented in the quiz (Step 2).

Ensure you provide students with the Filter Your Future Education Project Poster and assist them whilst they read through the facts. Direct students to search and investigate the 'Sugar By Half' and 'Filter Your Future' websites to discover relevant information about true facts, and factual myth-busting ideas to share in the quiz.

Step 2. Quiz time

Quiz time!Now that students have developed the quiz questions they are ready to partake in the 'Sugar Quiz.' Invite students to decide how they think this quiz should run to ensure that participants practice a high level of respect, but is also have fun and are challenged.

Some ideas might include:

Each student presents their own questions as part of the quiz game show
Using bells, buzzers, whistles, and sound to buzz in with an answer
Set up some rules for the quiz
Choose a quiz master for the game show
Encourage an inclusive classroom of listening when the question is answered and buzzing in to answer.
Invent your own scoring system (2, 5, 10 points system), will teams be losing points, etc.

Get ready, get set and share the quiz with the class, keep the pace fast, fun, and factual.

Reflection

Engage students in a class discussion around the following question:

What did you learn about the sugar in the products?

You can use these guiding questions as conversation starters and reflective tools in your discussion. Alternatively, you could invite students to work individually to record their own answers to these questions in their workbooks:

What surprised you about the sugars in the products?
What did you already know?
What will you do differently now? What conversations will you have at home?
How might this change your household shopping list?

Differentiated Learning

Extension - Develop the quiz further as a Kahoot for the whole class to take part in.

Provisions for Learning Support - Divide students into groups based on learning support and additional needs. Create question prompts for the classroom or specific groups to help them understand what type of questions are relevant to the topic.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

SugarByHalf - Sugar Mythbusters

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