Primary Source Exemplar: Nutrition and Human Rights
Overview
Students now move on to analyze datasets that portray statistics of malnourished children under the age of five. Students acquire knowledge of how organisms process food sources and evaluate the usage of food substitutes such as artificial sweeteners. Students will write claims that evaluate reasons for child malnutrition and how they might be changed.
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to determine trends about child malnutrition by analyzing a data set.
Students will be able to make the connection between changes in the environment and metabolic pathways.
Students will be able to make claims about the nutritional value of meal substitutes by researching several different examples.
Students will be able to evaluate reasons for childhood malnutrition by comparing energy input with energy output.
Students will be able to make a claim regarding nutritional strategies that benefit humans without negative effects on the ecosystem.
Standards Addressed
CCSS R-1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts.
CCSS R-2 Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; provide an accurate summary of the text distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
CCSS R-7 Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually (e.g., in a flowchart, diagram, model, graph, or table).
CCSS W-7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
HS-LS2-3 Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
Instructional Approach
Introduce the lesson
The teacher could begin the lesson by asking students to make a claim in their journals about why a child would be considered “malnourished.” Ask students to use data directly from their prior learning and sources used in previous lessons to support their claim. An interesting inquiry aspect would be to leave off if the malnutrition equates to underweight or overweight children. Students might assume malnourished means underweight; however in the United States, 1.3% of children under 5 years old are underweight while 8% of children under 5 years old are overweight. Allowing students to expose their misconceptions is an opportunity to explore the difference between perceived and needed energy levels.
The beginning of this assignment should also introduce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (specifically #25) as a reason that malnutrition is a global issue. The UDHR is an anchor text that is being used in several content area lesson plans. Here the UDHR is being used to connect biological knowledge of what food is to the concept that access to proper nutrition is a human right.
Analyzing Primary Sources – Dataset on Child Malnutrition
Introduce the dataset of child malnutrition rates by country by telling them that it comes from the World Health Organization, an international organization that monitors health issues around the globe. Divide the students into groups so they can investigate the document together. Scaffold students’ investigation of the datasets by asking guiding questions such as:
What is the title of the dataset? What does the title tell you about what you will be looking at?
How is the dataset divided? What kinds of information does the document present? What details seem important and why?
Why does the website include statistics for both underweight and overweight children? How do energy levels relate to these numbers?
For any one country, is there a difference between the male and female figures? Do you see any trend between the male and female percentages across a range of countries?
Compare the overweight and underweight percentages of the same country. How do they compare?
Based off of the dataset, what is the meaning of “malnutrition”?
What assumptions or conclusions can be made by analyzing trends across different countries?
Students should investigate the document in groups. Allow them to observe and identify details, related to the guiding questions, as well as details they find interesting.
Direct Instruction – Metabolism and Carbohydrate Storage
Once students have analyzed the document and arrived at an understanding that malnourished children can be both under and overweight, describe the metabolism of food for energy transfer. Use attached Wikipedia diagram (“Effect of insulin on glucose uptake and metabolism”), or one similar, to explore the metabolism and storage of carbohydrates in humans. Direct instruction on the fate of excess carbs will help students see how both over- and under-nutrition can affect the health of an organism. Be sure to clearly demonstrate the relationship between the provided diagram and corresponding health issues such as diabetes. Students should come away from the class with an understanding of how both the lack of food resources and access to excess carbohydrates may lead to malnutrition (underweight and overweight respectively).
Interpreting Primary Sources and Claim Writing – Meal Substitutes
Students first read an academic article on the issues artificial sweeteners present as substitutes for sugar. They will then write a claim about meal substitutes, synthesizing information in the academic text and from the lesson on metabolism and storage of carbohydrates. Students will evaluate the effectiveness of meal substitutes within the lens of different constraints, such as access to fresh foods.
1) Read the abstract of Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements by Susan E. Swithers out loud while the students follow along with their own copies. Provide students with definitions for any vocabulary that cannot be deduced by reading the text. These words may include: vocabulary for different sweeteners; metabolic syndrome; energy homeostasis; and metabolic derangements.
2) Divide the students into groups to analyze the article, providing a set of guiding questions to scaffold their analysis of the passage. By reading the abstract, students are asked to determine the main idea of the text, which is that sugar substitutes can have deleterious effects. Students will need assistance in interpreting the abstract, but should leave the class exploration with the skills to apply the analysis performed here to other substitutes such as protein replacement and fat replacements.
What words or phrases stand out to you as you read the text?
What is the central theme or claim of the abstract?
What words does the author use to refer to sweeteners other than sugar?
In the first sentence, what are consumers hoping to avoid by turning to sweeteners?
In what sentence does the author tell the reader what the specific focus of the article is?
How does the diagram of the effects of insulin relate to the information presented in the abstract?
Why is energy homeostasis important?
Why are the effects of consuming artificial sweeteners counterintuitive?
What is a metabolic derangement?”
Students should interact with both the insulin diagram and the “Artificial Sweetener” text. This allows students to build content knowledge of direct pathways that are altered as a result of environmental conditions, including human choice.
Other, more accessible sources on artificial sweeteners are provided in this unit. These cover the same topic and issues, but may be appropriate to use for ELLs and students reading below grade level. These texts may also be used as either an alternative or supplemental to the academic Swithers text. These texts include a CNN news article titled, Study: Diet soda may do more harm than good, by Danielle Dellorto, and a video, “Real or fake sugar: Does it matter?” that features CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
3) Students now write a claim to explain why artificial sweeteners would disrupt the path of sugar metabolism.
Synthesis Task – Writing an Expository Paragraph
At this point in the unit, students have analyzed several aspects of food, energy, metabolic processes, and datasets, and may require a synthesizing activity. By writing an expository paragraph (as opposed to an argumentative one), students will have the chance to put into their own words the information they have been analyzing and discussing to this point. In this paragraph, students develop an expository paragraph that links the following content:
The 10% energy rule and corresponding impacts on food choices
Contrasting motivations to eat (taste and energy needs)
The impact of particular food substitutes (nutritional barriers) on the human system.
Factors that lead to malnutrition
Assessment
Students will have:
Analyzed and answered guiding questions concerning a dataset
Learned about metabolism and storage of carbohydrates in humans
Read and analyzed one or more academic texts that address meal substitutes (e.g. artificial sweeteners)
Written claims that identify why artificial sweeteners would disrupt the path of sugar metabolism
Researched articles related to the articles on artificial sweeteners
Written expository paragraphs that make connections between the unit’s concepts at this point
Given these activities, the teacher can:
Provide feedback to students as they explore trends in the malnutrition data to encourage students to see trends over time, in countries/regions, across genders and of extent of malnutrition.
Monitor students’ understanding of metabolism by asking questions during direct instruction
Monitor groups’ analysis of an academic article on artificial sweeteners
Provide feedback on students’ claims regarding sweeteners and metabolism
Provide feedback on students’ expository paragraphs