| Reviewers Comments: | Get Cooking 1 is a cooking curriculum consisting of six, two-hour classes which can be taught together as a series or as stand-alone session. The classes were designed to be used as a part of an after school program. Each class focuses on one important area of food and nutrition: flavors and senses, food safety, MyPyramid, meal planning, healthy snacking, and eating salads.
Each session includes a food preparation component, where students prepare one or two recipes. While a full kitchen is not required, some cooking equipment or utensils, as well as a sink and a clean work area will be needed. Recipes are incorporated in the curriculum and incorporate basic, inexpensive and readily available ingredients. Nutrition information is not included for the recipes.
Get Cooking instructors should have experience teaching nutrition education and cooking skills. It is recommended that there is at least one instructor for every 8-12 students and an assistant (or several assistants, depending on class size) to help with recipe preparation and answering questions. Instructors will need to do some advance preparation before each class, including food shopping and preparing some food elements ahead of time.
The Instructor’s Guide will help educators put the curriculum into action. Well written and easy to follow, it provides an overview of each session, a guide to lesson and recipe setup, and list of materials and ingredients needed. Many lessons include exercises, activities or demonstrations to enhance the students’ learning. To help the educator assess the students’ progress, every lesson includes a student pre-test and a post-test. The Instructor’s Guide also includes tips for the instructor and several appendices which review seasonal fruits and vegetables in Northern California, additional web resources, an overall tool and consumable list, rules for kitchen etiquette and reference information for measurements equivalents and conversions.
Get Cooking is designed for children and teenagers, but because of the basic nature of the curriculum and the skills taught, would probably work best with elementary age children. When working with older children and teenagers, instructors may choose to provide more in depth information and more advanced recipes based on their students’ level of learning.
NOTE: This curriculum is part of a two-part series of the Get Cooking curriculum. For part two of this series, please see Get Cooking 2 . |
