My students need healthy snacks like YumEarth Organic Fruit Snacks and Better Chip Spinach & Kale Whole Grain Chips to expand their palate toward more nutritious choices and keep them energized to learn.
In the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area school where I teach, we work with a diverse group of students from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some come to school with background knowledge about how to eat healthily, while many others lack fundamental knowledge about how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Some families are financially able to provide their children with healthy choices at snack time, while others are not. Students also demonstrate a wide range of abilities in terms expected school behaviors. Some are model students, while others struggle just to maintain attention, complete work, and treat others respectfully. On our 5th grade team, the teachers enthusiastically promote expected school behaviors in order to create peaceful, productive learning environments.
We have approximately 100 growing, hungry kids, and we want them to be healthy.
If they have more experience with healthy options, then when given a choice of something to eat, we hope they will learn to make the most healthful one.
My Project
We have run this project earlier this school year with great success! Students were highly motivated to use the Tiger Tickets they earn for good behavior toward purchasing healthy snacks. Many of them were wary of the unusual healthy choices at first, but once they tried them, they loved them.
The hope is that in the future, when given a choice between unhealthy snacks and healthy ones, students will choose the healthier options now that they know they can "taste great," too.
Additionally, since they need to demonstrate good behavior to earn the Ticker Tickets, they will also be motivated to show their best.
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