CP813: Extreme Makeover
Abstract
Reference: CP813
Classroom Practice: Year 11
Title: Extreme Makeover
Duration: Two terms
Overview: Students were asked to take a family favourite recipe and adapt it, as in the Healthy Food Guide magazine Extreme Makeover section, to make it healthier. Students worked with their families and the magazine editor and nutritionist as they developed their products.
Focus Points:
Background
St Kentigern College in Pakuranga, Auckland, is an independent co-educational Presbyterian school with over 1,600 students. Students at middle school level (Years 7-10) are taught in single-sex classes, and seniors (Years 11-13) in co-educational classes.
Food Technology and Soft Materials Technology were introduced in 2003, the first year that girls were admitted to the school. A purpose-built Art and Technology block was opened that year to accommodate the extra classes and students.
In 2005, Technology teachers started working on a collaborative approach to ensure all students covered the same technological practice. As they mapped out what students should be learning through each curriculum level, they worked together to transfer all their individual units into a standard departmental format.
All Year 7/8 students now have a semester working in each domain (Food, Soft Materials, Hard Materials, Electronics and Control) over two years. At Year 9 around half the students are new to the school, and may need to learn or re-learn some baseline skills or knowledge. All Year 9s have a term working in each domain, and Year 10s choose two domains to work in over the year.
Food Technology teacher Carolyn Norquay originally worked in banking, then decided on a change in career; she completed a Bachelor of Education at the University of Auckland and started teaching Home Economics. Her move to St Kentigern College to teach Food Technology coincided with the introduction of NCEA Achievement Standards in Technology. Carolyn says she started teaching a mixture of both subjects "hanging on to what I knew", although she now teaches Technology through all the levels. "Things aren't static," she says, "there is always so much to learn in Technology".
Pre-planning
Carolyn has found the Healthy Food Guide a good classroom resource, and comments that she often observes students reading it. The magazine has an Extreme Makeover section, in which a popular recipe is made into a healthier version. She thought this could be the basis of a good unit and, giving students the knowledge and skills to adapt recipes and make them more wholesome, an important life skill.
Carolyn contacted the magazine's editor Niki Bezzant and suggested that she might like to visit and work with the Year 11 class on an Extreme Makeover unit, explaining how this type of involvement helps make a project more real for the students. Niki was happy to oblige and said that the magazine management considers this sort of collaboration an important part of their work.
This unit was delivered in 2007 to a mixed-ability class.
Delivery
Carolyn used the first term and a half to teach skills and knowledge to her students. Although the Technological Knowledge strand of the Technology curriculum was not due to be introduced to classrooms until 2008, she began teaching it during this time in the hope that her students would benefit from this knowledge when doing their projects.
The Extreme Makeover unit started in June when students were asked to investigate their family's favourite recipes and identify one they could make into a healthier version. They were encouraged to look through old family recipe books and talk to their families about where the recipes came from, and what made them family favourites. After selecting a recipe they were asked to justify why they had chosen that particular one.
Niki, and nutritionist and Healthy Food Guide contributor Bronwen King came and talked to the students about the project, and how recipes are developed for the magazine. They discussed technological practice in the test kitchen, and how a recipe has to be accurate, straightforward and look like the kind of food that the magazine' readers would want to make.
Having an 'outside' authority talk about their own technological practice impressed the students more than the ordinary classroom teacher ever can. Carolyn says that while students will come up with key factors for their brief they don't really engage with the importance of it, and are often doing it because they've been told to write a list. Niki and Bronwen talked about their key factors – a recipe has to be healthier than the original, it still has to taste good and look good. Hearing that key factors are important to the Healthy Food Guide moved the concept from a theoretical to a real one for students, and was the first time some of them really understood the significance of key factors.
Niki spoke to the class about the expectations around working with a client. Students would be working with their individual families as they developed their recipe and reporting back to the Healthy Food Guide team as well. She provided an incentive for outstanding work: if any projects were suitable for the Extreme Makeover category she would consider publishing them in the magazine.
After deciding on a recipe, the students did some research on the original ingredients and their properties, before beginning to experiment on how they could make their dish healthier. Pasta meals were the most popular option and there were also waffles, banana fritters, South African pancakes, chocolate cake, self-saucing pudding, cheesecake, and a traditional Korean dish.
As they worked on adapting their recipes, the students investigated which ingredients they might adjust and which would be suitable to substitute, to make something that was more nutritious while retaining the same taste and appearance.
When trialling each version the students consulted with their families on taste, texture and appearance. They also consulted with other stakeholders such as friends or classmates.
When the development stage was completed the students were required to write a report on their recipe in the style of the Healthy Food Guide Extreme Makeover pages. Everyone then did a presentation to Niki about their product, explaining the changes they had made and their families' responses to it.
Outcomes
Carolyn is happy with the Extreme Makeover unit, although disappointed that it didn't work quite as well as she'd hoped this first time around. While there were some good results, she felt that there weren't any outstanding projects she would want to nominate for potential publication in the magazine.
Some students found that, due to the type of recipe they chose, they were slightly limited when it came to making changes. For example, the student who made fried rice concentrated on lessening the oil and modifying a few other things, but didn't have a lot more he could trial. Carolyn plans to have everyone make a chilled dessert next time; so that she can teach more around the skills they learn or practise.
"One reason Extreme Makeover is a good unit is the technological practice," Carolyn says. "The kids do a lot of trialling and the situation makes the work more 'real' to them. Working with Healthy Food Guide was valuable for us and the editor told the class about how useful it was for her to find out more about the teenage market through her contact with them."
What next?
At the end of 2007 Carolyn had pondered whether working with two different clients, Healthy Food Guide and family, made the unit too big for Year 11 students, and whether she should perhaps move it to Year 12. She thought that if it remained at Year 11 she would make the teaching aspect at the beginning more focussed, so that students could move on to the product development stage without delay.
Having concluded that Extreme Makeover was indeed a good unit for Year 11, Carolyn has retained it at that level for 2008, although she has restricted the class to producing a chilled or frozen dessert.
She has also changed the approach to working on this unit. She found that the students couldn't make the links between what they had been taught in term 1 to their technological practice and knowledge for working on Extreme Makeover.
In 2008 Carolyn managed the teaching of knowledge/skills through working together with the students on a term 1 unit in which they were asked to develop a drink to fit the new tuck shop guidelines. She modelled the design process for them to give the experience they needed to do this independently for Extreme Makeover.