School Name: Nakusp Secondary School
School District: SD#10 Arrow Lakes
Inquiry Team Members: Christina Barisoff: christinabarisoff@sd10.bc.ca, Peter Gajda: petergajda@sd10.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: Christina.Barisoff@sd10.bc.ca
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE
Grade Levels: Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Area(s): Applied Design, skills & Technology
Focus Addressed: Experiential learning, Inquiry-based learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Students design and create short recipe booklets based on Canada’s new Food Guide, then select and prepare a recipe.
Scanning: Students reviewed Canada’s new food guide. Students also viewed recipe books and videos by Chef Chief Andrew George, Chef Michael Smith, and Chef Jamie Oliver. A question that arose was whether students have experienced such food, and if they have embraced all of the material presented.
The objective is to create a short recipe booklet of personal or family favourites, or a collection of others’ recipes, practice citing sources, and highlight how elements of the food guide are incorporated, whether it be in mindful eating or the use of local plants, fruits, vegetables, or recipes which highlight cooking and eating together.
Focus: This area was selected to incorporate recipes promoting balanced eating and nutrition, appreciation for local food as much as possible, eating practices, and food systems.
Hunch: A hunch was that students didn’t always have the opportunity or time to learn about a greater variety of foods, and time to sit and share their stories with others.
New Professional Learning: The Canada Food Guide toolkit was explored, and some pilot lessons via a dietician’s pilot study were made possible for classes to do more. A variety of recipe sources became evident, and having spoken with the Indigenous support teacher, another cookbook was made available through the local public library, which is possible to purchase in the fall. Regarding resources, in general, students became their own experts and the resources of this project. A wide array of recipe interests were portrayed.
Taking Action: Please view the presentation at this link: https://youtu.be/G0aC4TlPVdI
Checking: The differences made were enough and we were satisfied. The baseline was that it would engage most of the students to compile and share something, which most of them did. The senior foods class seemed less interested in this particular booklet method, but the junior foods really embraced it. (The seniors voiced interest and became highly engaged in multi-step, multi-day recipes, rather than a focus on the compilation of a booklet.)
Reflections/Advice: Overall it was a successful inquiry. In the future it would be good to reduce some of the details of the original assignment chart. It overwhelmed some, so it can be scaled back. Allowing students more flexibility with recipe choice may be a plan, especially for anyone feeling overwhelmed. A third idea would be to spend even more time prefacing the entire assignment with activities like: how to read different types of recipes, how recipes differ, how to read different types of recipe books, and how to read recipe websites.