Chase Bridge has undergone a significant building programme over the past two years. We ensured that the building design helped us to positively enhance the curriculum. We took the opportunity to look carefully at the areas where we might be able to grow fruit and vegetables building on our successful and established gardening club. But we wanted to do more. Spurred on by the content of the D&T orders with the focus on cooking and nutrition we decided to hold a special curriculum week with ‘Food’ as its central theme which we intended to have value in itself, but also have a longer lasting legacy in the way that we organise the curriculum.

The week covered all year groups. Each year group had four main areas that they covered: growing food; preparing/cooking food; eating food; and health and nutrition. Activities and learning was either class based or part of an event – for example live cooking demonstrations and a fishmonger gutting and filleting fish.

The outcomes of the week were very successful. In addition to the learning that had gone on during the week it has also given impetus to curriculum development, both planned and extra-curricular. We now have our Little Lion Café established, a timetabled curriculum activity in year 6, where children also provide food for some of our school events; designated growing areas for year groups supported by a gardener specially appointed for that purpose; and very popular extra-curricular cookery and gardening clubs established.

The Food Focus Week was planned by a core group of staff and its purpose, the activities and events and what staff needed to do was described in a staff meeting using this PowerPoint:

Following our initial planning meeting with staff year groups planned what they would do under four main headings: Growing; Buying; Cooking; Eating. A record of the coverage was kept in a table which supported some of the whole school practical planning, use of rooms and spaces, sharing and timetabling of resources and also sparked further ideas and suggestions by the staff.

We introduced the Food Week and the main themes of the week to the children by baking pizzas in an assembly and starting to think about where the ingredients had come from.

A strong and very successful element to the food week was the practical hands-on nature of the learning. Many of the sessions, such as the one in the photo involved the children actively. In this particularly example our kitchen staff worked with the children and gave them a tour of the kitchen.

We also worked closely with the Academy of Culinary Arts and benefited from their ‘Adopt a Chef’ initiative. Lawrence Keogh, a top chef and also a parent at the school, worked with the children and colleagues teaching the children food preparation skills. For more information click on the link: http://www.royalacademyofculinaryarts.org.uk/

Each day a different member of staff did some live cooking in assembly. This ranged from stir frying noodles and vegetables to pancakes, making ice cream sundaes and cous-cous. This was particularly effective being able to use ‘food-cam’. We linked a digital camera to a computer which then enabled us to project the image onto the wall so that the children could smell and hear the food cooking, but also see it clearly. At the end of the session we always had some tasting for the lucky few!

Our own ‘bake-off’ competition also drew in the parents to the week’s activities and we had a wonderful response!

We wanted to introduce children to fruit and vegetables that they might be less familiar with and ran a competition which also helped to involve parents.

We also taught lessons in all year groups about health, nutrition and a balanced diet. The well known ‘Eatwell Plate’ was used in many classes.

The Food Week was also an opportunity for us to review the contents of packed lunches with parents and children and up-date our guidelines and expectations.