Facilitating the Food Detectives workshop in your fourth grade classroom is as easy as pie.
We know teachers are busy. That’s why when you request a workshop, we send you a free kit in the mail with everything you need, including access to our interactive website that leads your class through the program.
Let’s dive into how easy it is to turn your fourth graders into Food Detectives!
📚 It’s Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
Interested in facilitating a Food Detectives workshop? It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
1. Create Your Account
Click on “Get Started” on the homepage of our website and you’ll be taken to our program site where you can create your account. We will collect information like your name, school, and preferred workshop month.
2. Review the materials and prepare your classroom
We designed the workshop to be easy to teach with minimal prep. Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be taken to your teacher dashboard where you can watch a quick tutorial, print your materials (one worksheet per student), and set up your classroom.
3. Facilitate the program
Once you’re ready to teach, divide your classroom into five groups and make sure every student has a pen or pencil. Then simply project our website onto your smartboard and we take it from there. Our easy-to-navigate site leads students on their journey to become Food Detectives through a mix of animated content, live action videos, games, and timed investigations.
Our curriculum typically takes about one hour to teach and can be paused at any time. Our site will remember where in the lesson your classroom left off for easy re-entry. It is comprised of two 30 minute modules:
- Front of the Box: How food companies use marketing to catch your eye and convince you to buy their products
- Back of the Box: What clues can you find that help tell what’s really in your food
🧑🏫 What do teachers need?
All you need to teach the workshop is:
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A stable internet connection
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A projector or Smartboard and speaker
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An appetite for adventure!
📝 What do students learn?
One full hour of high-quality, interactive, standards-aligned content – it doesn’t get much better than that! In this course students learn about
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Food Marketing – Food companies spend $2 Billion/year marketing to kids. Why?
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Ingredient Lists – The best way to find out what’s really in your food..
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Critical Thinking – Take everything you learned, analyze food products, and practice making informed food choices
If you want even more food detective fun, we have an entire arsenal of standards-aligned curricula on our Additional Lessons page.
📊 The Data Is In – Our Program Makes An Impact
We have almost two decades of data and it consistently shows that students score 35% higher on our nutrition education assessment after taking the workshop. Not only that, but they self-report being more curious about what is in their food, and say they are likely to change the way they shop.
Teachers love us too! 100% would recommend the program to other teachers, 85% find it personally informative, and many tell us it is one of the units they look most forward to teaching every year.
🍎 Final Word
We are passionate about food education, and we know teachers are too – but it can be hard to find or design impactful food-based curriculum. That’s why we designed a program that is fun, informative, and easy to teach.
Want to find out how easy it is to teach our workshop? Click Get Started in the navigation menu and find out!