This term in Food Technology Year 9 students have been focusing on Food in Australia. Students have been making delicious pizzas using indigenous lemon myrtle, chocolate banana smoothies fused with wattle, chicken nuggets and Milo Woopie pies seasoned with salt bush .

Year 10 students have been focusing on meals that food trucks provide and can eat on the go including 

• omelette bites
• ramen noodles
• mini sweet
• savoury pizzas
• chocolate coconut slices.

Students had the opportunity to use fresh produce from our garden and celebrate what our Agricultural Studies students have been planting and harvesting.

In addition, both Year 9 and 10 Food Technology students participated in Trish Weeke's Literacy in Subject Area activity, using the Teaching and Learning Cycle, focusing on the 'describing' genre. Students learnt how to describe a meal in terms of its appearance, taste, texture and food preparation method. 

Students completed this activity in stages. Firstly, students wrote a 'cold draft' describing the 'Thank you burger' meal. This was first completed without explicit teacher instruction. Once they had completed the cold draft, students were taught the phases of a good description response, using a modelled response to compare their paragraph with. 

Next students completed a group writing activity (supported writing) to describe ramen noodles and write all the phases into a paragraph using the modelled response as a guide. During this stage, students developed a clearer undertsanding of the process and their confidence grew in writing a describing text. 

Finally, students underwent an independent writing activity where they had to describe the chicken burrito meal in accordance with the phases taught. Student were extremely focused on the task and produced quality descriptive texts. According to their exit slip, students felt that this process was very valuable and that their writing skills in the genre of describing in Food Technology had improved.

SR1 and SR4 participated in similar literacy activities describing a pannacotta dessert and coconut mango meringue. They were given additional support and time to finish each phase and were able to complete an assignment to describe a mini pizza with various toppings. They also thoroughly enjoyed this process and felt a sense of achievement.

Mrs P. Cazouris | Head Teacher TAS and VA