What’s the point of knowing what a balanced diet consists of if you can’t prepare one?

This was the message for a great lesson I happened to see when visiting Greater Joy School a few weeks ago. The grade 6 class had been looking at a healthy balanced diet in science and so the training teacher in the class decided to teach a hand on lesson to demonstrate what this looks like in ‘real life’. The lesson consisted of preparing a feast with as many different food types as possible.

Here the teacher is discussing potatoes – as she prepared the potatoes for a Beef stew she discussed the starch in them, the need for energy foods, she reminded the children to use the correct scientific language to describe these food groups ‘Carbohydrates’. As you can see from the photo there was a wide range of food available – not normally what we expect to see from our community schools. The feast was a result of careful planning and preparation– The teachers had divided the class into 3 groups – carbohydrates, fruit and vegetable and protein. Then within each group they had asked for different food items – discreetly asking more vulnerable families to bring the cheaper easily available food such as tomatoes grown in their own garden. Wealthier pupils were asked to contribute meat or fruit. A very clever way to ensure that all pupils were able to be ‘equal’ in their contribution to the lesson.

Challenging stereotypes...The teacher asks “who wants to fry the fish?” - Many of the boys were keen to try cooking as this is normally a ‘women’s job at home.

Preparing potatoes for the potato salad

Gutting fish ready for seasoning. Children learning about different types of protein but also how to prepare and season fish for cooking. 

Sifting for stones in the rice

I was completely distracted from my normal work and found myself joining in and asking children questions about food and cooking at home. Sadly I had to leave before the feast began but was very glad to have had a glimpse of some truly great and inspirational teaching.