Year 8 Food Technology Curriculum Plan
Overview
Year 8 pupils learn how to design and make new food products. The emphasis is on learning to cook nutritious meals and developing an understanding of the various properties of food materials.
Ingredients and recipe ideas are drawn from a diversity of cultures and pupils are encouraged to test and taste their own ideas for combining new ingredients.
Pupils also use their own ideas during the final module to develop a new food product for their silver or gold DATA food award. Details of awards can be found at DATA and follow the links, or more directly on Active Kids Get Cooking. Pupils are required to carry out their own research in order to design, make and evaluate a new food product to a given brief.
Key skills are learned using a 'hands on' approach and pupils need to be well organised with ingredients, containers and planning sheets for practical lessons. A large, named plastic box is very useful in preventing spillages and confusion at the end of the day!
Current planning sheets and ingredients lists can be found here. Any queries or problems regarding ingredients can be addressed via email (at least 24 hours before the lesson please).
Year 8 Area of Study and Key Skills
Food Functions
Tortillas, pastries and bread are shaped and formed to encase a variety of fillings. Pupils explore the origins of ‘street foods' such as Calzone pizza and Cornish pasties.
Popular sauce recipes such as bolognaise and béchamel are used to show how liquids are thickened using different ingredients and cooking methods.
Pupils learn how sauces can be combined with other foods to make nutritious and attractive everyday meals.
Seasonal fruits are used to make desserts such as mousses, cheesecakes and flans. Pupils learn how air is added to mixtures and which ingredients can be used to set liquids.
Food Award Project
Pupils learn how new products are designed and made in the food industry. Each pupil is given a design brief and uses the skills outlined below to design and make their own prototype for a new food product.
• research and planning
• generating design ideas
• making skills
• quality and safety control
• presentation and food photography
• testing and evaluation of finished product
