Topic: Healthy eating and basic culinary skills

Year Group: Year 7

Focus:

1. Core culinary skills
2. Sensory vocabulary and writing evaluations
3. Food science theory—Nutrition and healthy eating

What we will be learning

• Students will make a series of dishes that develop core culinary skills. These dishes are cous-cous salad, savoury muffins, pizza scone swirls, chicken and vegetable stir fry, fruit and oat crumble and finally croque monsieur.
• Students cover theory focused on healthy eating so will learn about the Eatwell guide, benefits and recommended daily quantities of carbohydrates, protein fibre, fats, sugars vitamins and minerals
• Students will learn about the sources of these food groups
• Students will also develop their evaluation writing skills by developing their food sensory vocabulary

Why is this important? Where does this link to future/past learning?

• The core literacy skills such as those developed when writing evaluations are also transferable to the other 2 areas of Design and Technology, i.e. Product Design and Textiles, and that is why developing core literacy skills is one of the main focuses for this module.
• The dishes have been chosen as they each focus on a core skill that needs to be mastered in order to become a confident and competent chef both in school and at home. For example, cous-cous salad develops the claw and bridge grip, two important grips used when chopping vegetables. The vegetables chosen range in shape and size e.g. bell pepper and carrot, so that students get lots of practice chopping different kinds of foods.
• Other core skills include, baking, frying, making sauces, weighing and measuring, food hygiene and washing up as well as multitasking, teamwork and time management.
• Each core skills will then be built on and re-enforced through more complex recipes in year 8 and year 9. For example, the same principles used to make the sauce in the croque monsieur are used when making the sauce for Mac n’ Cheese in year 8 and Chicken Pot Pie in year 9.

How will this topic be assessed? Formative and summative

• Formative assessment and feedback happens each lesson through teacher questioning and advice on work in progress and completed. Students also have broad targets in their sketchbook that act as a scaffold for them to reflect on their work and generate their own personalised action plan for improvement in their learning. These targets are linked to “DIRT” activities aimed at building independence and metacognitive skills within the students
• Summative assessment happens in three stages. Firstly, when assessing practical work, the teacher will assess students work in real time during the lesson and may pick out certain students for special credit. At the end of the food module teachers will award students a mark out of 40 taking into account all of the students practical work for that module.
• The students evaluation writing skills and all other design skills will be assessed in their sketchbook. At the end of the module the teacher will award a mark out of 35 using comparative judgement and rank order.
• Students theory knowledge will assessed through a theory “quest” which covers 25% of the overall mark

What make a strong piece of work in this topic, and what can I do to stretch myself in this topic?

• When completing your evaluation activities, use as many sensory words as possible and write really clear and well-constructed sentences
• Practice the core skills at home and try to cook as much possible
• When completing any design work in your sketchbook try to be as creative as possible and focusing and producing impactful and eye-catching designs