Cookery Rationale PDF

Intent

At Hawthorns we have our own cookery room where most of our children are able to access a cookery lesson once a week.  We hold very strong values in teaching the children life skills. We want them to gain independence at their own individual level.

We focus on understanding the kitchen safety and understanding cooking vocabulary, also identifying and using cooking tools.  We need to understand the use of our five senses which will help the cookery aspect.

Having a knowledge of different cultures and festivals is part of the ethos we celebrate at hawthorns side by side with cooking foods form the countries they originate from eg Pizza [Italy] Goulash [Hungry]

Implementation

What cookery looks like in the different pathways.

• First Steps (based at our Discovery satellite provision) – Simple recipies are chosen so the children can take part according to their individual abilities. The recipies are prepared in class with Mrs Lee who runs the cookery sessions at our Discovery Site. Mrs Lee vaires the recipies so each week the children have the chance to feel, smell and taste different ingredients and use different types of equipment.
• Connections (based across two sites, Audenshaw and WildBank satellite provision) -  In Blossom this led by Miss Haggerty with 3/4 pupils at a time plus one member of class staff, in Elder this is led by Miss White working with 1/2 pupils at a time. The lesson follows a picture recipe and all instructions are supported by symbols or pictures. In other Connections classes chidren have opportunities to experience early cookery skills through group work and speaking and listening sessions.
• Enrichment – Lead by myself again with one member of class staff, taking the children in 2 halfs. This includes visuals with more looking and listening and prompting with open ended questions. e.g. Where do we find the butter?
• Aspire – Lead by Mrs Whittaker with half the class at a time this includes Pine/ Aspen/Willow plus one other adult. We use visuals, more speaking and listening with verbal promps to find equipment. Leading to Chestnut, Maple and Sycamore who are lead by myself only, using visuals and more language than the other classes. The children will be encouraged to collect/find utencils and ingredients. They will be encouraged to engage in most tasks by themselves including weighing out and measuring. The children will then wash up and tidy away all equipment.

One example including the diverisity into all the pathways was cooking on health week. The lessons throughout the pathways consisted of healthy foods and learning.

We made rice cake owls and cats with the communication model and enrichment, making sure the children could engage at  their individual level.

This includes some sensory support for children who don’t like to feel textures.

Moving up to making fruit pizzas using healthy vocabulary to making vegetable skewers outside and bringing number into this as the children added the different vegetables. The  lessons were planned to fulfill childrens intrest and their individual learning styles.

Impact

When the time comes for our children to move on to secondary school, most of the children will feel more confident about working with food. All the children will have had the opportunity to use all their senses whilst exploring different ingredients. This would have been in the form of feeling food eg mixing with their hands, smelling ingredients and also if comfortable tasting ingredients and final products. This becomes clear to staff that the children are making progress and the different stages of cookery have had a clear impact.