September 9, 2012October 16, 2013 Jill Gough

Water instead of Soda #PBLidea #AskDon’tTell

Is there PBL potential and academic content in this commercial from Nestlé?

By replacing one sugared beverage a day with [a bottle of water], you can cut 50,000 calories a year from [your] diet.

The fine print in the ad says that this is based on replacing one 12 oz 140 calorie sugared beverage daily with water for a year.

Where could a discussion of this ad take us in class? What questions will learners ask? What questions will we ask our learners? What questions might be asked to challenge learners apply what they know? What questions might be asked to promote problem-finding, problem-solving, communication, leadership, initiative, action, service, and other critical competencies?

Ask; don’t tell. Listen and learn. Just ask a question…see where it takes us.

One comment

jplgough says:

September 9, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Here are the questions that popped up for me:
- Is it true that replacing one 12 oz 140 calorie sugared beverage daily with water for a year will eliminate 50,000 calories?
- What if someone reduced caloric intake by 50,000 calories over the year by replacing a daily sugared drink with water? How many pounds could be lost?
- What is in diet drinks that replaces the sugar? Will replacing one 12 oz 140 calorie sugared beverage daily with diet drinks for a year also save you 50,000 calories? What is in diet drinks that is not in water?
- Are we consuming too much sugar? Do we need to reduce the intake of sugar in our community? What campaign could we development to promote reducing sugar?
- Are plastic bottles easier or harder to recycle than aluminum cans? How can we persuade our community to recycle more?
I first wondered how many grams of sugar are in a can of Coke? If there are 39 grams of sugar in one can of coke, how many grams of sugar are consumed if you drink 1 can of Coke each day for a year? How many calories are in 14,235 grams of sugar? How many pounds is 109839.8 calories? Wow.

As 8th graders, our Synergy learners were very interested in childhood obesity as well as health and nutrition. This connection led me to the article, Can Childhood Obesity Hinder the Brain?.

I can find math, science, persuasive writing, and persuasive presentation in the first 10 minutes of my investigation. I also learned about Nestlé’s global outreach concerning water.

Where would other learners take us during a collaborative session on questions and connections they find?

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