Improving the Health and Nutrition for Students

There have been a lot of theories written on how we develop from birth to adulthood; the basis of it is explained within the three domains, physical, cognitive and social – emotional development and although they seem like three separate areas they in fact relate closely together.

Arnold Gesell a theorist wrote a theory on physical development and explained how a child develops using age norms, he noted how a child grows and changes from a baby to a teenager going through puberty, how a brain develops, which in turn develops gross motor skills, which are running, skipping, jumping, throwing and catching, and fine motor skills are described with writing, threading and using scissors

Cognitive development refers to how the brain develops, it is not just about what we know, it is how we see and interpret the world. One theorist, Piaget, wrote that children develop cognitively through the interaction of their experiences of the world and the process of “growing up” or becoming more mature. They actively select information from their environment and try to understand. As a child grows their language develops, as does their ability to reason, and they start to put things in a different perspective.

Social and emotional development refers to change in emotions. Social relationships change more as we grow, and we start to form more secure friendships and moral reasoning changes from learning how to share, also understanding about rules and consequences.

As an educator, making sure a student feels safe and emotionally secure is an important part of their lives. A teacher needs to realise the strength of each individual student and work within that. Also setting up a buddy system, with a younger student paired up with an older student...

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...r most children don’t receive this in their daily intake. Implementing a fruit time would help this as some parents won’t send fruit to school, saying their children won’t eat fruit. If the teacher was to have ten minutes before recess for fruit time, the children will be getting some part of their daily intake needed of fruit. Having this program set up encourages students to bring fruit to school, and hopefully sets up a pattern to continue encouraging students to have fruit in their daily intake.

References:

Wechsler, McKenna,H. Lee,M,S. Dietz,W.(December,2004),Childhood obesity.

McDevitt, T.M.2010; Ormorod, J.E. (2010) pp5, 32.

Henniger,M.L.( 29thFebuary, 2008.), Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice hall, Teaching young children.

www.childrensmemorial.org

www.healthyactive.gov.au

www.investinkids.ca