ERIC Number: EJ1092941
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Mar
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1073-5836
EISSN: N/A
What Is Your Body Mass Index?
Yanik, H. Bahadir; Memis, Yasin
Teaching Children Mathematics, v22 n7 p442-446 Mar 2016
Billions of dollars are spent each year in efforts to prevent and treat diseases caused by unhealthy eating habits. Promoting awareness among young children regarding the importance of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is crucial for preparing them to sustain healthy lives as adults. This article aims to highlight ways to help students determine a healthy weight and then use an interactive simulation as a tool to design a healthy eating plan, check its appropriateness on human health, and make informed decisions about their weight status to support a healthy lifestyle. The interactive simulation provides a fruitful learning environment in which students conduct explorations, get instant feedback, and connect ideas with real-world phenomena. An estimated 2.16 billion adults and 170 million children are overweight or obese (Fontana and Hu 2014). Body mass index (BMI) is a common way of identifying one's weight status. BMI is calculated by dividing one's weight in kilograms by the square of one's height in meters (kg/m[superscript 2]) (Flegal et al. 2012). Promoting the awareness of maintaining healthy weight during childhood may help students live healthier lives throughout their adulthood. For this purpose, the authors developed an activity for upper elementary school students to make decisions about their weight status and design diet plans accordingly.
Descriptors: Body Weight, Health Promotion, Interaction, Simulation, Eating Habits, Life Style, Feedback (Response), Body Composition, Computation, Elementary School Students, Foreign Countries, Mathematics
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 1906 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191. Tel: 800-235-7566; Tel: 703-620-9840; Fax: 703-476-2570; e-mail: NCTM@nctm.org; Web site: http://www.nctm.org/publications/teaching-children-mathematics/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Turkey
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A