Integrative Assignment—Pedagogical Grounding
NUTRITION ESSAY
Developed by Gabrielle Kahn and Rebecca Arliss
Kingsborough Community College
DISCIPLINES: ENGLISH COMPOSITION AND HEALTH SCIENCE
LEARNING COMMUNITY PURPOSE AND GOALS
The overarching purpose of the Intensive ESL learning community program at
Kingsborough is to promote a strong start for our English as a Second Language
students through their participation in a rigorous, first-semester academic program
that fosters connections between faculty and students. The ESL 07 learning
community in which this assignment was given supports students at our lowest
English language proficiency levels through tutoring, counseling, and coordinated
coursework—including an ESL class, a Health class, a Speech class, and two Student
Development classes.
The students’ coursework in this learning community is linked together by joint
writing and speaking assignments across the curriculum, and the introduction, and
reintroduction, of shared vocabulary. This assignment was given in both the
students’ Health course, Foundations of Health and Physical Education, and their
English course, Basic Reading and Writing for Students Learning English as a
Second Language. Broadly, the theme of the assignment is nutrition. A central
question underlying its design is: how does the consumption of fast food constitute
a health risk?
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION:
The assignment asks learners to imagine a scenario in which a businesswoman
working for the McDonald’s corporation proposes that a new McDonald’s restaurant
be built on the Kingsborough campus. Students were asked to write to the
Kingsborough board arguing for or against this idea, drawing upon various resources
including their health textbook, the documentary film Supersize Me, and their
personal experience. The assignment was designed to promote integrative thinking by
asking students to pull together content from their Health course in a written format
following the objectives of their English composition course.
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Integrative Assignment—Pedagogical Grounding
PURPOSE OF ASSIGNMENT:
The purpose of this integrative assignment was to provide learners with tools and
experience in constructing a well-researched, persuasive composition centered upon diet
and its relationship to disease.
QUESTION OR ISSUES THE ASSIGNMENT ADDRESSES:
The issue grounding this assignment was how the presence of fast food in our
environment can affect our health risk behaviors.
DISCIPLINARY GROUNDING:
For this assignment, students were expected ground their work in two disciplines:
English Composition and Health Science. Learners were asked to construct a drafted
essay meeting key criteria for composition writing, as discussed in their English class
(e.g., making an argument, maintaining a focus, providing evidence, and proofreading
for mechanical errors), addressing content from the discipline of Health: the study of
illness causation and prevention, and how lifestyle, perceptions, and decisions affect
health and wellness.
STEPS TAKEN IN EACH COURSE TO HELP STUDENTS DEVELOP DISCIPLINARY GROUNDING:
To develop this disciplinary grounding, students were asked to read chapters in their
Health book, Invitation to Health by Dianne Hales, and to answer critical thinking
questions in writing and class discussions on the topic of nutrition. With their tutors,
students watched the documentary Supersize Me, took notes as they watched, and
later explored this content in their own writing and with their tutors, professors, and
classmates.
In their English class, learners were presented with a persuasive letter based on the
novel they were reading, Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan. Students
read the piece of writing and examined it closely—its organization, the nature of the
argument presented, and the persuasive language used—and were encouraged to
consider these aspects of composition writing in their own writing process. Feedback
on a number of essay drafts, both oral and written, was provided to students by their
English teacher and tutors with drafts completed both in school and at home.
Learners also practiced using persuasive language in their Speech class by completing
an assignment in which they role-played dialogues between an Aboriginal Australian
and an American working to convince one another to make a lifestyle change. In
addition, students were asked to visit a McDonald’s restaurant and conduct an
informal research project there. In their Speech class, they engaged in discussions on
the nutritional content of various items on the McDonald’s menu.
OBSERVATIONS ABOUT STUDENTS’ WORK IN RESPONSE TO THE ASSIGNMENT:
(evidence of disciplinary grounding and purposeful integration)
The ability to effectively summarize a reading is emphasized in the students’ English
course. In examining the integrative assignments, we noticed that students
demonstrated the ability to summarize both the events in the Supersize Me film
(a film in which the protagonist, Morgan Spurlock, eats only McDonald’s food for 30
days) and the informational content in their health textbook, and to note key facts.
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Learners were also found to draw upon and analyze this content, as well as content
from the novel being read in their English class, to build their own arguments.
The lack of nutrition information available in McDonald’s restaurants in the movie
was used to support the view that we should not economically support a company that
was not honest at our college. The daily number of calories recommended by the
author of their health text was cited as evidence for the claim that fast foods have too
high a caloric content, and the danger posed by the regular consumption of fast food
was described with reference to the risk of elevated cholesterol, heart disease, cancer,
and obesity. The high fiber, plant-based diet consumed by the Australian Aborigines
in their novel—shown to aid in disease prevention—was described as a point of
contrast to a low fiber diet of fast food.
A second, related goal of the English course is to develop learners’ voices as second
language writers. In their compositions, we observed students taking a strong stand
against the hypothetical scenario of building a McDonald’s on their campus, and
doing so using vocabulary that defined them as emerging experts in the discipline of
Health Science. It was requested that, before any action be taken, the board read an
“educated opinion” about why the availability of new fast food items would be
harmful for college students. The importance of human health was emphasized, with
a comparison drawn between the effects of McDonald’s food and the effects of
“a narcotic” on the body.
We also saw evidence of purposeful integration in the broad lens through which the
students conceptualized health. A new McDonald’s was described as having the
potential to negatively impact, not only the physical health of individual students, but
also the environmental health of their beautiful campus (e.g., by cutting down trees
and covering up the fresh ocean air with oily fumes). Soups and salads were proposed
as alternatives to fast food, with connections drawn between foods that are appealing
to the senses—those that taste good—and foods that are nourishing to the body.
Finally, we noticed that while essays were generally well organized, with ideas
grouped together into paragraphs and a clear sense of direction and flow, the average
essay did not exceed one and a half typed pages. A key aspect of effective
composition writing is fully developing one’s ideas, and we noticed that students
could continue to develop their ability to ground their thoughts in evidence drawn
from their health-based coursework.
INSTRUCTORS’ REFLECTIONS ON THE ASSIGNMENT AND STUDENTS’ WORK:
Overall, we feel the design of this integrative assignment met our course-related
goals. Students were shown to write meaningful and persuasive compositions
about the negative effects of a fast food diet. A question that remains is how
personally invested students were in this particular topic. All took the same stance
in response to the essay question and cited similar excerpts from their course texts
and film. A question we wish to pursue is this: how might we broaden the assignment
guidelines to allow students to critically examine a health-related topic of their
own choosing?
We have begun exploring possibilities for how we might revise this assignment to
provide students at low/intermediate levels of academic English with the support
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needed to synthesize information from their health discipline in an organized essay
format, and to select and expand upon a topic that they have helped identify. We are
considering doing this in two key ways: 1) grounding all essay assignments in Health
and English courses in a central, health-related issue each student chooses at the
beginning of the semester, and 2) transforming the current composition assignment on
nutrition into a speaking assignment with peer assistance.
To implement these curricular changes, we may ask students during the first week of
their Health course to choose a dimension of wellness described in their textbook that
matters to them that they would like to explore throughout the term—e.g., physical,
emotional/psychological, social, intellectual, environmental, or spiritual. To spark
their consideration of this wellness dimension in writing, they may be asked to
explore the dimension in their first English class essay—a composition in which they
describe their own transition to the United States and the transition of the narrator in
their course novel as she moves to the desert Outback of Australia.
And to encourage their awareness of how a persuasive text can be linguistically and
academically constructed in their second language, they may listen to speech given by
their Speech professor with the intention to persuade and, using this text as a model,
work in small groups to create a speech arguing for or against a new McDonald’s
building on their campus in the context of their chosen health dimension.
To support learners’ growing independence as researchers in constructing these
persuasive texts, we will not limit resources to the Supersize Me movie and chapters
on nutrition in their textbook, but might encourage students to find their own sources
as part of a library-based project in their Student Development class.
Following the group speeches, a final composition assignment will be given in the
English class in which students are asked to integrate the material in previous
assignments in some or all of the following ways: 1) define their chosen dimension
of wellness using their health textbook, 2) describe its relevancy to their own lives,
3) discuss how the Australian Aborigines in their English course novel engage in this
health behavior in their daily activities, and 4) present an argument for how we might,
in our modern society, take small steps to strengthen this dimension of our health and
wellness practices.
We feel that the additional degree of open-endedness afforded by these curricular
changes would further develop learners’ voices as emerging writers and health
experts by giving them a greater stake in analyzing, applying, and personalizing
content from their Health discipline in their English compositions. By drawing out
these voices and this expertise across our disciplines, we aim to give our students
opportunities to make deeper, more meaningful connections between what they are
learning in their college courses, aspects of their own identities, and real-world issues
and problems.
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