Division of Nutrition Assistance

Nutrition Across the Curriculum: How to Use this Guide

Nutrition Across the Curriculum: Lesson Plans for Grades PreK-12 is designed to provide comprehensive, action-oriented delivery of nutrition information that targets standards and benchmarks established by the Louisiana Department of Education in the content areas of health, science, mathematics, English/language arts, physical education and social studies. The content standards and benchmarks used in the lessons can be found at the beginning of each content area section.

Teachers can easily identify the subject area and grade level for each lesson plan using the Table of Contents or the Lessons-at-a-Glance chart. Because other content area concepts are sometimes addressed within a lesson, interdisciplinary connections are noted on each lesson plan.

The lesson plans are based on 50-minute class periods and can be adjusted for either shorter or longer class periods or the block plan format. Many of the lessons work well together or can be combined to teach thematic units. Pre-kindergarten benchmarks are not noted in the Louisiana Content Standards Foundation Skills, but lessons at this level have been included to help the pre-school teacher integrate nutrition topics into instructional planning.

The lesson plan format follows the template designed for lessons found at the Louisiana Department of Education Making Connections website. Each lesson has been identified with one primary subject area; however, interdisciplinary standards and benchmarks have been identified for most of the lessons. Interdisciplinary standards are identified within the lesson on the Making Connections website. Benchmarks for the interdisciplinary standards have been listed on the table by the name of the lesson within this Nutrition Across the Curriculum website.

Integrating lessons from Nutrition Across the Curriculum: Lesson Plans for Grades PreK-12 will strengthen nutrition education in Louisiana and in the United States in general. We hope you enjoy making nutrition a part of your teaching!

The listing of website links in the lessons does not constitute an endorsement of the information provided at the sites. Because of the nature of the World Wide Web, it is not possible to follow every link on every site to determine that all the information is up-to-date and reliable. Please use your own discretion when using any material found on the websites and links from them to other sites.