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- July 8th, 2009
Cooking Mama:World Kitchen – a great recipe for international education at Lairdsland Primary!
- kaplin
- Comments: 1 CommentTags: Cooking Mama2:World Kitchen, games based learning
I was delighted to have the opportunity to return to Lairdsland Primary School on June 23rd to see how Cooking Mama:World Kitchen had developed as a project in P3/4 with class teacher Catriona Calvert. I was enchanted and excited by what I saw and heard – quality learning, enthusiastic and confident children completely absorbed in the world of international food and cuisine!
Catriona explained to me that the project had started by choosing four countries; these were chosen to reflect the nationalities of families in the school. The children had then researched these countries and created a fact file. This had given them the opportunity to extend their geographical vocabulary and knowledge of sense of place.
Many contexts and opportunities for writing were facilitated by the game. These included writing biographies for imaginary chefs that were brought to life using Crazy Talk, booklets about the equipment used in the kitchen, instructions for making a chef’s hat and apron and menus for use in the Lairdsland Café (a role play area in the classroom where e.g. goods were priced and recipes costed out).
The class had collaborated to create a ‘Foods of the World’ recipe book and made a profit of £300! The children had written letters to parents appealing for recipes, they word processed the recipes, advertised the book and coordinated the sales including handling the money and keeping accounts. Catriona explained that the preparation of the book had heightened the children’s awareness of different cooking methods, the variety of foodstuffs and different cultures.
Health Week in the school had provided an opportunity for cross sector working – staff and pupils from Lenzie Academy had come and worked with the class and cooked ‘Tortilla Wraps’ with the children. I had the pleasure of being present at the first screening of the ‘cookery shows’ that the children had made with the help of pupils from P6. This process had involved writing a script, identifying props, accurately weighing and measuring ingredients and adopting the role of chef and presenter in front of the camera. The films had been edited by the P6 pupils and the results were fantastic! Everyone was given a copy to take home as a memento and to share with their families.
The visiting art teacher had explored working with different media with the children, a classroom assistant from Poland had talked to the class about her home country and what it was like to live there and the portraits of celebrity chefs were amazing! Children handled money confidently as they worked through shopping lists and easily navigated their way around the internet as they searched for information about their favourite foods and recipes.
I had a wonderful time in P3/4 at Lairdsland Primary school – I saw rich cross curricular learning, facilitated by creative and innovative teacher Catriona Calvert resulting in motivated, enthusiastic and confident children! Cooking Mama:World Kitchen – obviously a recipe for great learning!
Categories Consolarium, East Dunbartonshire, cross-curricular
Once again another great games based learning approach which totally captured the children’s imagination and encouraged them to be enthusiastic learners. This was a great topic that ensured children had the opportunity to develop their enterprise skills while at the same time provided lots of opportunity to improve their writing skills, both functional and imaginative. It’s fantastic to see Games Based Learning being embraced at Lairdsland as it has such a positive impact on attitude and learning.