Physical Development and Health Lesson Addressing Benchmark 23.B.ECb

Introduction

The classroom’s pretend grocery store is a popular play area. In other adapted lesson plans, the children have taken a field site visit to a local grocery store and reflected upon their trip with photos (16.A.ECa), learned a silly song about grocery stores (25.A.ECc), and built a pretend grocery store where they exchanged money for groceries (15.D.ECa). The grocery store has provided many opportunities to build skills that help the children reach the IELDS benchmarks during play. During snack and lunch time, the children often discuss where the food was purchased and trips to the store with their parents to buy groceries.

At a recent training about teaching healthy behaviors, Mrs. Silva and Mr. Chung were introduced to the Choose My Plate materials created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). They later realized the grocery store project was a great time to introduce the My Plate information to the children through play.

Mrs. Silva and her teaching assistant (TA), Mr. Chung, are responsible for developing learning activities that meet the needs of diverse learners and address the Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards (IELDS). Mrs. Silva knows that the majority of children in her class will meet the standards and benchmarks. However, she will have to make adaptations for those children who need more individualized instruction.

Mrs. Silva is the state-licensed head teacher in a monolingual classroom of 20 children (all 4 year old) with diverse learning needs. There are 17 typically developing children with age-appropriate skills and behaviors in the class. These children act as peer models for the remaining children in the class. Of the 20 children in the class, five children speak a language other than English at home. Languages represented in the classroom include Spanish and Arabic. These children are all dual-language learners who started school with a varied understanding of English. Mrs. Silva recently obtained her English as a second language (ESL) endorsement to teach young children who are learning English. Three children in the class have diagnosed special needs requiring an individual education program (IEP).

• Aiden has a diagnosis of hearing impairment and has a moderate hearing loss in both ears. He wears two hearing aids. His parents have elected for him to receive speech-only instruction, and he is not being instructed in American Sign Language.
• Olivia has a diagnosis of developmental delay and has Down syndrome. Most of her needs are related to cognitive skills and self-help skills.
• Reggie has a diagnosis of autism. He has advanced verbal skills but has trouble staying on task for even brief periods of time. He is very directive in play situations with peers and is resistant to a change in routine.

On occasion, some children exhibit challenging behavior during small group lessons. Mrs. Silva would like to implement strategies to address challenging behavior in the classroom.

Mrs. Silva’s district uses a state-approved developmentally appropriate curriculum. Mrs. Silva and Mr. Chung perform universal screenings three times per year (fall, winter, spring) for preschool children.

This lesson addresses a primary benchmark. A secondary benchmark is included to offer ideas for addressing an additional benchmark within one lesson. Teachers are encouraged to be creative in thinking of ways to address multiple benchmarks within one lesson.

Materials

• My Plate mini-poster (placed on the wall near the small group activity table)
• My Plate coloring sheet (empty My Plate diagram)
• Magazines and grocery store circulars
• Glue bottles
• Scissors

Mrs. Silva and Mr. Chung keep an anecdotal record of the conversations about healthy foods and types of food they are having with the children. They note the children’s comments and ask the children questions about the foods they are eating and shopping for to assess their knowledge of categories. They will use this information to plan further activities with the My Plate materials.

The children continue to be interested in the My Plate chart over the next few weeks. They especially like to talk about what foods they have on their plates during lunch and what categories they fit into. Mr. Chung and Mrs. Silva use these conversations as opportunities to continue to build the children’s knowledge about healthy foods.

This lesson was written in the context of Mrs. Silva and Mr. Chung’s classroom. We now offer some general suggestions of adaptations you can use in your classroom.