We had a couple of interesting lessons with this mini-investigative resource, we compared the fridges of two teachers, but it can be easily adapted to the students’ fridges. Involves a range of skills, we used this as a starter to the local ‘v’ global debate. Supporting resource to follow…

The scheme aims to look at the issues surrounding food as well as develop geographical different skills.

In this lesson we rated our responses to national different dishes (I’m not sure they are the official ones!) and mapped the results, to add a bit of movement I printed the different slides and posted them around the room- seemed to work!

Resources can be downloaded here.

A bit of context is needed… the scheme is for year 7 and based around food, but it will deliver atlas skills, some basic numeracy and ICT skills. It will probably be taught around the mid part of the first half-term, so I’m looking at easing them in, as well as developing good habits.

I’m not sure whether this is the start of the scheme or not (I just wanted to make a start!), I’ve been thinking about how to open the unit. This was my first bit of inspiration.

So I was thinking about cultural differences in food etiquette…

This got me thinking about how national identity is sometimes, stereotypically, linked to food dishes. It’s how my mind works.

So the first part of the lesson involves a ten question type quiz, asking students to suggest a nation to a national dish.

I thought we could discuss a couple of things from this..

• how geography and history has influenced food choices.
• the role food has in culture and defining identity.
• how this identity might be used to stereotype nations.
• how these national dishes might be relics, due to globalisation.

Most of this, will of course, be discursive.  Lets not scare them!

I then thought about a task related to food etiquette, so produced a set of etiquette dominoes related to food and drink. I’m going to show the HSBC advert before this…

I suppose there is also a discussion about the impact of globalisation here on food etiquette. Perhaps a later lesson about fast food and the impact on different cultures. McDonalds is credited for street eating in Japan which was taboo.

Perhaps the weakest task is the final part of the lesson, asking students to research five favourite dishes and their origins. Not sure about this.

The resources are here.

As always feedback would be grateful.

Began to upload some Pilot resources related to the My Place unit. I’ve also added some resources on farming, which seems to be popular at the moment, some old favourites here. Also added some work on global food consumption, I’m randomly putting together a unit looking at issues through food and water. Also began to upload some retail resources, more to come…