Joanne

Conrad Chapter 5


 * Joanne DeMarchi Icebreaker Activity**

Course: Fundamentals of Nutrition

Task: Introductory exercise for the beginning of the course. Title: My Favorite Meal Objective: To introduce the wide variation in individual food choices and what drives those choices.

Author: Joanne DeMarchi MA, RD Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, CA jdemarchi@saddleback.edu Method: Asynchronous

Instructions: Describe your favorite meal in detail and why is it your favorite? How often do you eat this meal? Do you think it is a healthy choice? Why or why not? Finally, what is the brief phrase you would use to describe your approach to healthy eating?

Notes: Have all your students post their responses and review the responses from their classmates. Afterwards students can be broken into small groups to identify what they identify as key factors in determining food choices; culture, cost, habits, time, health etc. A WIKI could work for this follow up activity.


 * Critique of Joanne DeMarchi's icebreaker activity by Monique Coombes: **

I think this is a good exercise although I think it is pushing the boundaries of being an 'icebreaker' according to our text. Our textbook states: "An icebreaker should not require anything more than the ability to express knowledge of self". Getting into whether or not their favorite food is a healthy choice seems to be less personal and more academic. **_** Joanne,

This activity provides lots of opportunities for rich follow up discussion. For your final project, I would suggest you include this and flesh it out further. One thought that comes to mind is that in your last question, you assume they have healthy approaches to eating. What if they don’t? How about if you re-phrased that with “describe your approach to eating” and then the follow up could be an exploration of what is healthy and not and perhaps even a survey of the students to get a snapshot of their approach to eating (x% eat Y 3 times a week, etc.)

For your project next week, I’d like to see you work this up further and include instructions as you would prepare them for your online students. Do you want them to write this in a DB or a wiki?

LeeAnn