Make one copy for each student of Banking on Strong Bones and distribute to students to review as homework the day before you begin this lesson.

• Introduce key vocabulary words to students from Banking on Strong Bones:

  Osteoporosis: A bone-thinning disease that causes bone to become fragile.
  Peak Bone Mass: The maximum amount of mineral stored in bones. Peak bone mass is the strongest bones will ever be, serves as the "bone bank" for a lifetime.
  Bone-building Activity: Moving the skeleton against gravity with force and impact. Also known as weight-bearing activity.    
  Calcium: Mineral essential to the formation of strong bones.

• Read Adolescence: Springboard to Lifelong Bone Health for background information to help you answer student questions, along with tips to share with your students to help them build strong bones.
• Make copies of Take A Closer Look...Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Calcium? and Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Activity?, one set for each student.

Lesson Length/Timing

We suggest you introduce this topic to your students following Lesson 7: Take Another Look, in the Exercise Your Options program, as students will Take a Closer Look at their food and activity choices recorded in their Exercise Your Options workbooks. The following lesson takes approximately 50 minutes.

In the Classroom

Tell the students they are going to take a closer look at their food and activity choices to see if they are building their bones the strongest they can be.

• Show the videotape Building Bone: Your Window of Opportunity. Ask students to watch for two things they could do to improve their bone health: 1. Eat high-calcium foods; 2. Do bone-building activity.

• Following the video, ask students: "How much of your skeleton is deposited during your teen years?" (50%)
  
  "Do teens eat enough calcium everyday?" (no, most eat about half of the amount they need).

• Have students take out their copy of Banking on Strong Bones and refer to the questions at the bottom of the page:
  
  "How does building your pyramid as strong as you can also help to build your bones as strong as you can?" (eating the recommended number of servings in each food group insures they will get enough calcium-rich foods).
  
  "What are the foods you eat now, or that you could add, that help you "deposit" calcium in your bones?" (ideas include milk, yogurt, broccoli, corn tortillas, etc.)

2.

Have Students Analyze Their Food Record for Bone-Building Foods

• Distribute Take a Closer Look...Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Calcium? worksheet.
• Have students open their Exercise Your Options workbook to their food record on page 14. Place Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Calcium? over page 15. Call on a student to read the top of the worksheet aloud.
• Have a student read aloud the high-calcium and medium-calcium foods listed on the worksheet. Point out the serving size references on the worksheet and remind students that they learned about these serving sizes in Exercise Your Options.
• On their food record (page 14) instruct the students to circle the high-calcium foods, and place a box around the medium-calcium foods.
• Using the serving size information, instruct students to record on their worksheet the number of servings of high-calcium and medium-calcium foods they ate.
• Have students compare their total number of calcium servings to the recommendation of 4 servings. Then have them turn to pages 10-11 of their Exercise Your Options workbooks to see if they need to adjust their plans to include more calcium servings.
• Have students list two things they could do to include more calcium on their worksheet.

3.

Have Students Analyze Their Activity Record for Bone-Building Activity

• Distribute Take A Closer Look...Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Activity? worksheet.
• Have students open their Exercise Your Options workbook to page 12, and place Do You Get Enough Bone-Building Activity over page 13. Call on a student to read the top of the worksheet aloud.
• Have a student read aloud the description of bone-building activity.
• Have students complete the true/false quiz.

• Have a student read aloud the list of bone-building activities on the worksheet. Brainstorm some additional bone-building activities and add them to the list of bone-building activities. (ideas may include jump rope, handball, boxing, etc.).
• On their activity record (page 12), instruct the students to circle their bone-building activities.
• Have students compare their total amount of bone-building activity each day to the recommendation of 20 minutes. Make it clear that within the recommended total of 60 minutes of moderate-hard activity each day, 20 minutes should be bone-building.
• Have students take another look at their activity plan on page 13 to see if they need to adjust it to include more bone-building activity.
• Have students list two things they could do to include more bone-building activity on their worksheet.

4.

Summarize

• To insure that your students get 4 servings of calcium-rich foods and 20 minutes of bone-building activity everyday, help them determine how they can put their plan into action by specifying the time and place to include more calcium in their food choices and more bone-building activity in their daily routine.

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