How to Run a Nutrition Month Poster Contest

A poster contest is the easiest Nutrition Month activity to run and the one students remember. It needs no kitchen, no field trip and no budget for food. Students research a nutrition topic without realising they are researching it, and you end up with a hallway display that does your teaching for the rest of the year.

Here is how to run one, from four weeks out to judging day.

Four weeks out: pick the theme and set the rules

A contest with a narrow theme produces better posters than an open one. Students given the whole of nutrition draw a food pyramid. Students given one question think.

Themes that work:

  • Make half your plate fruits and vegetables
  • What is inside a whole grain
  • How much sugar is in your drink
  • Why breakfast matters
  • A food from another country worth trying
  • What food does for your body during a game or a test

Write the rules on one page and send it home. Cover the paper size, whether digital entries are allowed, the deadline, how many entries per student, and whether the poster must include a fact with a source. That last one turns an art project into a nutrition lesson.

Three weeks out: give students something to start from

The blank page is where most contests lose half the class. Give students a starting point and participation roughly doubles.

We keep a free guide with ten poster ideas and layout suggestions here: How to Make a Nutrition Month Poster. Send the link home or print it.

It also helps to have real nutrition posters on the wall while students work. Not to copy, but so they can see how a professional poster uses one message, one big image and very few words. Our Nutrition Month posters are the ones most often used this way.

Two weeks out: announce it properly

A contest announced on the morning bulletin is forgotten by lunch. A flyer on the wall is not.

We have a free class announcement maker that produces a printable flyer in a couple of minutes. Put it where students queue: the cafeteria line, the gym door, the library.

Judging: keep it simple and public

Four criteria are enough, and telling students the criteria in advance improves every entry:

  • Accuracy. Is the nutrition information correct?
  • Clarity. Can you understand it from across a hallway?
  • Design. Is it readable, and is there one clear message?
  • Effort. Did the student do the work?

Score each out of five. Use three judges rather than one, and include somebody from outside the classroom: a food service manager, the school nurse, a parent, a local dietitian. Outside judges make the result feel real and they turn the contest into something the whole building knows about.

Announce winners in categories rather than naming one overall winner. Best accuracy, funniest, most creative, best use of color. More winners means more students who felt it was worth entering next year.

What to have ready before judging day

This is the part most people leave too late. The contest produces thirty posters and a room full of students expecting something to happen.

Certificates. Every entrant should get one, not only the winners. We have a free class certificate maker that prints them for a whole class.

Prizes that are not candy. A nutrition poster contest handing out candy is a memorable lesson in the wrong direction. Fruit and vegetable shaped pens, notepads, erasers, stickers, wristbands and bookmarks all work, they cost very little each, and students actually keep them. See classroom prizes and incentives.

Something to display the winners on. A bulletin board banner turns a wall of taped paper into a display the principal photographs. Square 24 inch banners are sized for a standard board.

A prize for the class, not only for individuals. A poster for the classroom wall, chosen by the students, is often more popular than anything one student wins.

After the contest

Photograph the display before you take it down and send the photos to whoever writes your school newsletter. Nutrition Month activities are exactly what districts like to publicise, and it makes running it again next year an easy conversation.

Keep the winning posters. A hallway with student work from three years running says more about a school's nutrition program than any purchased display can.

Free tools for the whole month

All free, and no account is needed.

Running one for a whole school or district?

If you are supplying more than one building, we can quote prizes, certificates and display materials as a package and ship to each site. Free shipping. Purchase orders accepted. Get a quote.

Written by Judy Doherty, MPS, PCII, a Culinary Institute of America trained chef and nutrition educator. Food and Health Communications has published nutrition education materials for schools and clinics since 1993.