Newswise — January 30, 2013, Park Ridge, Ill.—Color-coding foods into three categories that mimic a traffic light to help elementary school students distinguish good foods (green light) from unhealthy foods (red light) is proving to be a very successful nutrition education device in Colorado and elsewhere.
And that’s precisely why the “Go Slow Whoa” color-schemed system introduced three years ago at Laredo Elementary School in Aurora, Col. is featured this month by ENC-Teacher Exchange, a free web-based program for teachers that offers new and updated teaching methods that can help combat rising obesity trends in K thru 12 schools.
The success of Laredo Elementary’s “Go Slow Whoa” program is illustrated on the ENC-Teacher Exchange web site in a brief video that is accompanied by instructional tools that teachers can download at no charge. Laredo is one of 18 schools in the Aurora Colorado School District that is participating in the education initiative offered by Denver-based LiveWell Colorado, a non-profit organization committed to preventing and reducing obesity in the state by promoting healthy eating and active living.
ENC-Teacher Exchange was introduced a year ago by Egg Nutrition Center (ENC), science division of The American Egg Board in Park Ridge, Ill, and is supported by The American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences.
Egg Nutrition Center’s contribution to America’s battle against obesity in elementary and high schools is expressed in two ways:
· Showcasing teachers and schools that have created successful programs for combating obesity.
· Encouraging teachers to create and submit new ideas so that other teachers can learn and benefit from them.
Health, nutrition and physical education teachers in all 134,000 U.S. schools are invited to become members of ENC-Teacher Exchange, whereby they’ll receive E-mail notification when new video stories or teaching tools are added. Click here for easy online application.
K thru 12 teachers are invited to submit new obesity-fighting ideas to ENC-Teacher Exchange, with the understanding that concepts must be developed by teachers into practical teaching tools that can be shared with other teachers in order to qualify for a $500 honorarium. New teaching tools must be worthy of publication on the ENC-Teacher Exchange web site to merit the honorarium. That process usually requires a teacher to begin by sending a one-page concept description to [email protected]. For more information, please E-mail ENC-Teacher Exchange membership manager Linda Tinoco, or phone her at 708-974-3153.
Click here to view all eight obesity-related videos produced so far by ENC-Teacher Exchange. Source: ENC-Teacher Exchange at www.encteacher.org
RSS