Aims & principles

• For our children to be involved in planning, writing and producing a school cookbook that celebrates our cultural diversity and heritage
• To develop children’s speaking and listening skills which can then transfer to writing
• To be part of a creative writing project that encourages cross-curricular links
• To use a common language (the language of food) that enables our children to appreciate and respect other cultural backgrounds

In Practice

Professional writer Helen Cross worked with a Year 5 group over three two-hour sessions. Initially Helen discussed the project with the children and talked about food and recipes. Using a range of professionally published cookbooks as stimulus the group thought about what they wanted their school cookbook to be like. The children were divided into pairs and they each designed a series of questions to ask each other about food and they interviewed each other, took notes and fed back to the group. 

Helen asked the children to bring in recipes for the next session and, with the group, agreed what information was required for each recipe (ingredients, equipment, method etc). 

During the next session the children discussed the recipes that they had brought in and used the computers to write them up. Children then interviewed each other about their recipes to find out more about the story behind the recipe. These were also written up on the school computers. 

After the sessions with Helen there was some follow up work required to tidy up the recipes and find missing information, and we did this during our usual lesson time. 

All the information was collated and put into our cookbook. 

From the planning to the final delivery the project took around one half term to complete.

Our Headteacher was involved in planning the project and I have kept other teachers updated at phase meetings. We are going to launch the cookbook and invite all staff and parents to the launch. 

Outcomes

• The project has had a positive impact on children’s speaking, listening and writing skills
• The children worked very hard to present their work effectively and took a personal pride and interest to ensure that their recipes were presented in way that made them not only easy to understand but also appealing
• My class is a mixed ability group and it was pleasing to see how well our SEN and EAL children responded to the project. One child, who is not particularly fluent in reading or writing, really enjoyed getting involved in the project especially when he was interviewed by one of his peers about the dishes he eats at home, who does the family shopping and what he likes and doesn’t like to eat.
• Perhaps unexpectedly, the boys really enjoyed the project and responded particularly well to writing up methodologies.
• We are now visiting one of our local secondary schools and inviting parents to be part of a Big Cook whereby they will come to the local school and with their children will cook their recipe
• Using professionally-produced cookbooks to stimulate discussion and ideas worked very well. I will look at how we can kick off other topics using unexpected resources and stimuli.

Legacy

• A school cookbook that provides ideas and opportunities for similar writing projects and other year groups.
• A motivation and confidence to take on more special, long term developmental projects
• We would like to run more projects to encourage extended writing and more initiatives that involve external agencies and facilitators.

Final thought

The only real barrier was the information that children were able to obtain from parents. Cooking for many of our families is a skill that has been passed down from generation to generation and many of the dishes cooked in the home are not captured on paper, so trying to get accurate measurements and methodologies was difficult. However we used this as an opportunity to encourage children to talk to their parents to find missing information. 

I would probably have liked more planning time and perhaps more involvement in the detailed planning of the sessions.

I would encourage children to not only write things up on the computer but also to present things in a handwritten form. 

I would recommend other teachers to get involved at every stage and follow up the work during usual lesson time. Consider how you can weave the learning from the project into other areas of the curriculum.

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