Innovator: Suad Haddad, https://www.facebook.com/suad.haddad.90
Organisation: Wedad naser iddeen secondary school, Hebron
Setting of the practice: face to face
Description of the practice:
In the ever-developing world, many people face the problem of being overweight (being obese) due to different social factors, such as culture and the surrounding environment. This issue has become an obvious challenge for many people. Therefore, in the context of seeking to raise awareness of the dangers of obesity along with its physical and psychological hazards, I came up with an idea to open a restaurant that provides calorie-calculated meals to students and those who might be interested. Putting this theoretical aspect into practice, it would be a great opportunity to link chemistry to the reality of students' lives, and improve their nutritional and health practices.
As for the methods of carrying out my project, a pilot project of the restaurant was implemented with (33) female students in their eleventh grade at Wedad Naser iddeen Secondary School in the city of Hebron, Palestine. Based on the strategies of cooperative and project-based learning, I divided students into groups and distributed various tasks to them in alignment with their different skills and types of intelligence. In addition, students' performance was evaluated using rubrics for assessment. As for the role of students, it is manifested preparing calorie-counted dishes and presenting them to students, parents and educators.
In the same context, students employed technology throughout all the steps of the project. They designed a calorie-calculated menu, posters, awareness brochures, and a logo for the restaurant; in addition to other videos and presentations explaining how to calculate energy requirements the body needs on a daily basis, and how to calculate calories in different foods. Besides, students were responsible for compiling open educational resources and promoting the project through various social media sites. The way I handled the project is in alignment with my teaching pedagogy. I believe that I am a facilitator, and my job is to guide students towards the journey, but they ultimately have to go through the journey themselves. I helped students to access places of knowledge, useful design and video websites and tools. I contacted people in the hospitality sector to walk students through making dishes and the protocol of food serving.
As for testing the viability of the project, I invited educators, teachers, parents and people from the local community to provide their feedback the project has significantly impacted the students in increasing their curiosity about calculating calories for the food they consume, eating food in proportion to their daily needs.
I believe that this local project might be transferable to other local and international areas due to its importance in raising health awareness and helping people to stay healthy. Promoting self-learning among students and putting their technological knowledge to use, this project has succeeded in enhancing many of the skills of students, including 21st century skills, such as communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, innovation and creativity, digital culture, and cooperation. I am eagerly looking forward to further developing this project. by creating a mobile application so that students can log in, browse different food items served in the school canteen.
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