If you teach a culinary foods class, you no doubt include a unit on grains. While there are a lot of options for working with grains, the material can be a bit dry to teach. Thanks to Nebraska FACS teacher, Sarah Smith, this doesn’t need to be the case. Her “Cooking with Grains” is an interactive lesson you will want to try with your students!
When you think of food preservation, you might automatically think about canning. However, there is so much more to it, and thanks to Anna Hall of Ohio for sharing her Food Preservation Unit, you can find out! This engaging food preservation unit covers five days and explores various methods such as frozen, dried and canned foods as well as the changes throughout history. The unit culminates with students actually canning pickles.
Teachers Pay Teachers seller, Arlene Meckes, and I teamed up to collaborate on this Food Allergens lesson! You might know her from Twins and Teaching on TPT. This lesson offers an overview of common food allergens combined with some critical thinking and problem solving activities for the students to apply what they’ve learned. So, if you are in need of a food allergens lesson, be sure to check it out in her wonderful store!
After participating in two “Creating Digital Interactive Notebook” webinar sessions with Lindsey Harlan, I felt brave enough to attempt my first digital interactive notebook! The DINB: Cheese Unit covers a variety of information around cheese and also includes a couple of tasty labs (according to my students)! If you have the opportunity to participate in any of Lindsey’s sessions, I highly recommend it!
Throughout my foods course, I try to expose my students to a variety of global dishes. While lasagna is a well known dish, few of my studenst have actually prepared it from scratch. So, in addition to my pasta unit and my casserole unit, I taught them “All About Lasgna!” Read on to learn how!
After noticing continuous requests for lab suggestions that are doable in 43 minute class periods, I’ve decided to do a recurring series, featuring recipes that can be completed from beginning to end in a 43 minute time frame. In some cases, longer recipes will broken into two day labs. In addition, I will include my pre-lab review questions that pertain specifically to the recipe. This helps to ensure that students are reading the recipe. It also allows me time to show any videos that may demonstrate the product or specific techniques. So, without further ado, I present the first recipe in the 43 Minute Lab Series: Cloud Eggs!
I had the privilege of meeting Darci Friberg in person, last summer while presenting at the Missouri FACS Conference! Darci uses a lot of technology when teaching her students and she shared back with me a way to take a traditional group activity and turn it into a digital activity using Google Forms and Zoom breakout rooms. The whole grain group assignment using Google Forms & Zoom is an alternate way to complete the original group assignment in the Whole Grains lesson in case your school is going virtual or blended with teaching in the future.
Who doesn’t love chocolate? For me, dark chocolate hits the spot! Every. Single. Time! If you are a chocoholic or just enjoy the taste, you may also enjoy the following resources for teaching about chocolate. Many can be used in this world of remote teaching, but can also be used in the traditional classroom!
Another THANK YOU goes out to Holly Kelley for sharing this Pies Hyperdoc for E-Learning! In this lesson, students explore the history of pies, learn more about pies via an embedded PearDeck presentation, Ed-Puzzle videos before applying their knowledge and pie making skills at home. If you were planning on a pie unit for this spring, this Pies Hyperdoc might be the perfect solution!
With more time on my hands due to COVID-19, I find myself in the kitchen more frequently, experimenting with new recipes. Inspired by something a friend sent me, I decided to give gardenscape bread art a try. Whoever said bread has to be boring never tried this form of art! If you like your students to be creative and engaged, I’ve got just the lesson, activity and recipe for you! I am assigning this to my students as an enrichment E-Learning activity, but when I’m back in the classroom, you can bet gardenscape bread art will be part of my foods class as a creative lab!
