Groups 21-25

Group 21 – The World In A Garden – To assess the level of knowledge of nutrition and local food of families residing in the Kerrisdale and Marpole neighbourhoods of Vancouver

 

Group 22 – Think&EatGreen@School – Assessing & Developing a Vancouver School’s Organic Waste Management Strategy

With the help of LFS’s Think&EatGreen@School project initiative four years ago, Grandview Elementary School became an Earth-friendly school (elimination of gravel fields and set-up of a school compost). Group 22 was put in charge of assessing the school’s Earthtub and planing ways to make their 3-compost system work in the cafeterias. The team found that the compost was being misused due to students putting non-compostable items in the bins; because of this, the school stopped using the bins. In order to re-implement the compost program, Group 22 made signs for the compost bins designed to help students discard their food scraps properly. In addition to the signs, the group members held compost-how-to workshops in the school and spent a day transferring compost from a nearby community garden to the school fields. The team feels that their work will have a positive effect on the school’s food system and believe that the students, teachers, and themselves learned a lot and will use that knowledge practically in their lives.

Kat.

 

Group 23 – Think&EatGreen@School – The Story of Bread: exploring the transformations of grain production, processing, and baking in Metro Vancouver with grade 6/7 students in the VSB

The food system is a frequently used term in dialogs and discussions about health, food, nutrition and the community.  It includes all processes used to feed a population. This is what group 23 has done with the story of bread; using bread as the study case to demonstrate the infrastructure involved in the food system. Two workshops have been conducted at Tyee Elementary School for 6th and 7th grade students and a third will be facilitated within the next two weeks to complete this Think&Eat@School project. Students were introduced to the story of bread, grain production and how it’s farmed, harvested and made through 5 different activities. These activities included milling, nutrition fact tables and different grains. Part of group 23’s approach and methods of collecting qualitative feedback about these workshops is allocating time for students to create mind maps in groups.  Group 23 reported that most students knew a lot more than expected about the food systems but a certain group of students had some feedback that was different from all other groups in the 6th and 7th grade at Tyee elementary school. When asked what food means to them, this group responded with names of fast food chains and other unhealthy food choices. It is interesting to see how some students group together, and perhaps report answers that may not be true to themselves due to the sense of belonging (i.e. peer pressure) to fit in with their group mates. Hopefully this will change by the end of the third workshop, where they will all participate in preparing bread with group 23. What type of bread will they be preparing? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out.

Group 24 – Queen Mary Elementary School – Explorations in Classroom Cooking

It’s time to get kids thinking about food in a new light, and what better way to encourage them to eat those greens than by having them cook it? Group 24 was involved with a grade 5/6 split class to show these young students the basics of healthful home cooking with lessons centered around eating with Canada’s Food Guide. Since they were cooking in a classroom, simple salads and pastas were the go-to recipes. And of course cooking with 30 children posed challenges for the team, particularly when they are overly excited and handling knives, but everything was handled well and the students even proved how capable they were with knife and food safety. Members of group 24 really enjoyed this project and were excited to see the keen interest of the class in cooking and learning about nutrients, while at the same time learning a great deal about classroom management. Group 24 hopes that their lessons will inspire the kids to start cooking at home and be more conscience of the foods they eat.

You can access team 24’s recipes at bettertogetherbc.ca

Group 25 – University Hill Elementary – Supporting the creation of a school garden

This group determined a suitable site for a school garden at university hill in order to help them apply for a grant. They were able to work with a few of the kids and do an art project with them so that they could see what the kids thought a garden was like. They really enjoyed working with the kids and communicating with the Vancouver school boards dietician. They had a few bumps along the road and weren’t sure what they were supposed to do but once they figured it out it all fell into place! Their group is very large and so they had many issues trying to coordinate, but in the end they got the job done.

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