As part of our 2019/20 School Development Plan, our staff have been looking at the development of our foundation subjects. We agreed that our Design Technology curriculum, although popular and progressive for the children, required a few more tweaks than most subject areas in order to fully cover the revised requirements of the national curriculum. Food technology was a key area that we identified for further development. Two specific areas that required fuller coverage were ‘seasonality’ and ‘savoury dishes.’ We, therefore, created two new sets of medium term plans along these lines. The ‘seasonality’ unit is targeted for Year 5 in the autumn term and the ‘savoury dishes’ unit is targeted for Year 6 in the summer term. Mr Oswin was really looking forward to introducing this unit after the Easter break. Here is the DfE guidance for cooking and nutrition within key stages 1 and 2:
Cooking and nutrition
As part of their work with food, pupils should be taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating. Instilling a love of cooking in pupils will also open a door to one of the great expressions of human creativity. Learning how to cook is a crucial life skill that enables pupils to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and in later life.
Pupils should be taught to:
Key stage 1
use the basic principles of a healthy and varied diet to prepare dishes
understand where food comes from.
Key stage 2
understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet
prepare and cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques
understand seasonality, and know where and how a variety of ingredients are grown, reared, caught and processed.
We have uploaded onto the school website our curriculum plans for the units on Seasonality and Savoury Dishes (In our curriculum ‘Design Technology’ section). We have also added several of our finalised design technology plans, including a new unit on ‘Kites’ for Year 1 in September. There are, however, a few units still to be finalised, such as a Lego Mindstorms curriculum unit and the Year 6 Lighting it Up unit.. These will be in place for September 2020.
Given our current circumstances, we thought it would be a great idea to do something around Savoury Dishes during this period of school closure, but would like to open up this opportunity up for all children, rather than just for Year 6.
Savoury Dishes Skyswood Master Chef Competition
We’d love our children to have a go at cooking some of their own savoury dishes, whether it be just or two dishes for a bit of fun, or whether they’d like to take part in our competition that we will be running over the next four weeks.
In our Year 6 medium term plan for savoury dishes, the children would start out with a few simpler dishes, such as making their own ‘rice paper sheet rolls,’ ‘baked arancini balls’ and ‘cheese and bacon muffins’ (or cheese and onion for vegetarians). They would then go on to make a main meal, such as a paella, or a vegetarian paella. We would be looking to liaise with one of our local secondary schools to see if we could use their food technology facilities to support this). We then had the idea of a ‘House Master Chef’ challenge, where each of our house groups shared their ideas and then, as a group, chose their favoured ‘house dish’ (where they subsequently work as a team on the House Savoury Master Chef Challenge.)
So, here is how our Savoury Master Chef Competition will work.
Children who enter should make ONE savoury dish during each week over the next three weeks. Over the three week period we will be looking for VARIETY and a bit of CREATIVITY. So, for example, if you use a recipe but decide to tweak it slightly to suit personal taste, then let us know how your recipe has been personally adapted. Each week, the children should send a picture of what they have made, along with the recipe, highlighting any tweaks that you have made (but only if you feel tweaks are necessary).
After three weeks, Mr Oswin, Mrs McCarthy and I will judge the dishes based on your photographs and recipes. We obviously only have visual references so make sure you take a good picture for each of your dishes! We will consider the presentation of each dish, the variety within your three dishes, and the cooking skills necessary to successfully complete each dish.
In Week 4 we will select THREE finalists. For the final, we feel that a ‘taster’ is necessary too. We will agree a pre-arranged date where our three finalists can safely deliver three small portions to Skyswood to help Mr Oswin, Mrs McCarthy and I to agree upon who will be crowned Skyswood Savoury Master Chef 2020. Tilly Sports are kindly sorting a trophy out for the winner. Every child who enters (and produces three savoury dishes over the next three weeks) will be sent a special Skyswood Savoury Master Chef certificate, and our finalists will also receive Savoury Master Chef Medals.
Timetable for Savoury Master Chef Competition:
Sunday 5th April – Deadline for first photograph and recipe to be sent to head@skyswood.herts.sch.uk
Sunday 12th April – Deadline for Week 2 photograph and recipe to be sent to head@skyswood.herts.sch.uk
Sunday 17th April – Deadline for Week 3 photograph and recipe to be sent to head@skyswood.herts.sch.uk
Wednesday 22nd April – Announcement of three finalists.
Wednesday 29th April – Finalist portions to be delivered to reception at Skyswood Primary School. 4.00 p.m.
Thursday 30th April – Winner announced. Finalists Medals and Trophy to be collected from Skyswood reception. 1.00 p.m. Certificates will be sent out to all contestants.