Every semester, our middle school students spend three Saturdays building community and strengthening their reading, writing and presentation skills through engaging in project-based learning activities. This fall, 7th and 8th graders, alongside their St. Andrew’s mentors, thought critically about what is in their food and how it is directly affecting their lives. The Nutrition Bar is a creative learning activity that focuses on building nutritional knowledge and recognizing community issues to develop a healthy and attractive product.
The project is done in three phases, the first being research. The second phase is product development, where students work with various source materials and a nutrition bar website to construct their product and craft a presentation about it. The third phase is the pitch, where students work to take their nutrition bar to the public through the media or performance of their choice. Through creating a Nutrition Bar, students were able to combine research on surrounding communities’ health statistics, critical and creative writing, and public performance.
This past Saturday, students had an opportunity to present their product to an audience of peers, families, and community members with both a scientific explanation of the product and a marketing presentation of their choice (we saw many commercials, youtube reviews and more!).