Situation regarding school cookery lessons.

badgermonkey

Do the school run on a two-week timetable? Ours does, and so you might not see a class every week. They might have what equates to a lesson every week, but is, in practice, two lessons one week and none the next, so you would either give ten days + notice of ingredients (enough time for a lot of the class to clean forget about them) or two days (a hassle for parents, but at least the kids will remember). If that's the case, it's kind of an awkward situation for the teacher, who will have had absolutely no say in when the lessons are timetabled!

thriftmonster

Ds1 gets a week's notice - but he also has a recipe booklet which covers the whole year term by term so you can see what's coming in the next few weeks. We have to provide most of the ingredients - but the school provide communal herbs, spices, salt etc. Where the cost has been higher, the kids were split into twos or threes and each had to bring some of the ingredients but not all.

If you don't have scales - a heaped tbsp of flour is about an ounce as is a lvl tbsp of sugar.

franklally

Are you sure the children are not writing their ingredients down in their planner a week or two beforehand and then not remembering to tell the parent until the Monday when they look at their planner for the week?

I would be very surprised if a teacher would give less than one weeks notice for ingredients - all the lessons have to be planned at least termly and the recipes printed out - so it would be no problem to let parent's know what their child is doing earlier rather than later - maybe just asking will solve the problem. They have to plan their shopping for demonstrations themselves so will realise short notice is very inconvenient (and expensive).

If you do not have scales - get the child to ask the teacher if they can bring in their ingredients a day early and weigh up either at break/lunch time and leave them in school until they need them. There is really little spare time in an hour lesson for children to weigh their loose ingredients out unfortunately.

GCSE work can be expensive - if your child chooses this as an option speak to the person running the course on the option day/evening and ask if there is any help towards the cost of ingredients.

Hope this helps - yes I am a Food Technology teacher!

alwaysskint96

Oscar wrote: »

We pay the school X a term or weekly if it cant be afforded in one payment. The school then provide the ingredients. This is only for the compulsory Home Economics in the first two years of secondary. I have no idea what happens if they pick it as an exam subject. As a result the school can purchase in bulk and no one misses out! The amount to pay is not excessive either.

Wisj our school would do that. I have suggested it to them many times. Get sick of having to buy big pasckets of dtuff to use a spoonful then rest goes to waste

And surely weighing ingredients is part of the learning- we used to manage to do it in our hour Home Ec lesson.

shellsuit

franklally wrote: »

Are you sure the children are not writing their ingredients down in their planner a week or two beforehand and then not remembering to tell the parent until the Monday when they look at their planner for the week? Definitely not, the planner has to be signed at the end of every week by parents so we can see what has been planned for the week/s ahead.

I would be very surprised if a teacher would give less than one weeks notice for ingredients - all the lessons have to be planned at least termly and the recipes printed out - so it would be no problem to let parent's know what their child is doing earlier rather than later - maybe just asking will solve the problem. They have to plan their shopping for demonstrations themselves so will realise short notice is very inconvenient (and expensive).

If you do not have scales - get the child to ask the teacher if they can bring in their ingredients a day early and weigh up either at break/lunch time and leave them in school until they need them. That wouldn't work as the lists were given on Monday, to be cooked on the Wednesday, unless parents can drive and go to a supermarket after work on the Monday. There is really little spare time in an hour lesson for children to weigh their loose ingredients out unfortunately.

GCSE work can be expensive - if your child chooses this as an option speak to the person running the course on the option day/evening and ask if there is any help towards the cost of ingredients.

Hope this helps - yes I am a Food Technology teacher!

My son has actually given me 2 whole weeks notice for the ingrediants he needs next, maybe the teacher is wising up!

LilMissEmmylou

glad the problem seems to be fixed its nice to get updates to threads like this

thebuff1

Hi Shellsuit, glad problem has been resolved. Was going to say that in my experience medium (a whole term's) planning is done in advance and I would be very unhappy to think that a tutor is only giving such short notice. It is certainly worth sending in a note to the form tutor or head of year and if nothing is done, write to the head as the school may be genuienly aware that there is a communication and expectation isssue.
Hope things change for the good as cooking is a great skill and a pity to turn youngsters off at an early age!