OzHarvest

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Lessons

The project-based nature of the program covers content descriptions across the curriculum for students in Years 5 & 6, particularly in:

  • Science,
  • Technologies,
  • Engineering,
  • Mathematics and
  • English curriculum outcomes

The cross-curriculum priority of sustainability is addressed as well as a number of general capabilities.

The FEAST program explores the food system, food waste and nutrition. It provides context to introduce the content description “Investigate how and why food and fibre are produced in managed environments and prepared to enable people to grow and be healthy.” (ACTDEK021)

By questioning and seeking solutions to this real world-problem, students will develop an understanding of science and technology and how it influences our community and the natural world.

When applying the process of “Design and Production”, students engage actively with real world solutions and use technological skills, knowledge and understanding to create solutions to reduce food waste.

Through applying their science inquiry skills, students develop their understanding of scientific evidence in making informed decisions about the use of Science and Technology in their lives.

The creation of the School Cookbook facilitates the literacy aspect of the program as students read, interpret and create procedural and other informative written and multimodal texts.

Following and writing recipes provides students a real life application for working mathematically, investigating measurement, estimating, using fractions, problem solving and representing and interpreting data.

While the unit is targeted at Years 5 and 6 students, this is a suggested age range only and teachers are encouraged to adapt and change the program to suit your school’s needs. The topics are based on content descriptions of the Australian Curriculum, on a number of general capabilities and the sustainability cross curriculum priority. We recommend you run the unit over a 10 week period.

Although the unit integrates a range of key subject areas, it is not designed to be a total program. It is assumed that regular routines that operate in the classroom will continue to run parallel with the unit of work.

Yes, you can. The FEAST team has developed 8 lessons and activities to be available as online resources for you and your students.

Once enrolled in the program, you and your students will get free access to our online portal to download all the lessons and activities you need. We also offer a 3-hour online training module that is flexible and practical to kick start your journey in fighting food waste with your students.

The Solution Fluency Model is the path to gain problem solving skills and foster a deep understanding of local community issues. It offers students the opportunity to develop a wide range of life-long learning skills including:

  • Research
  • Teamwork
  • Community engagement

The interactive teaching and learning approach uses the solution fluency six phases: Define; Discover; Dream; Design; Deliver and Debrief.

  • Define: Intellectually engages students with a challenge, problem, question and task.
  • Discover: Includes activities in which students can explore, investigate, research, read, discuss, gather, organise and compare knowledge and data.
  • Dream: Enables students to imagine and develop possible solutions and explanations for the challenge, problem, question or task.
  • Design: Provides opportunities for students to apply new knowledge to situations, mapping production processes and developing a deeper understanding of a challenge, problem, question or phenomenon.
  • Deliver: This phase has two stages (a) production where the task comes to life and the student completes the work (b) presenting or publishing the work to an audience.
  • Debrief: Provides an opportunity for students to revisit, review and reflect on their own learning, new understanding and skills. Source: Solution Fluency
FEAST characters

About the Cooking

Encouraging children to eat healthy food is a global issue and FEAST embraces different food cultures and tastes. It is suggested that where students are vegetarian, pescatarian or vegan, they can choose to explore, cook and create recipes with specific ingredients or that suit their eating preferences.

You don’t need a kitchen to teach these lessons. All meals can be prepared in a classroom setting. We do advise to buy the kitchen kit to have all products and tools available.

The FEAST program will provide you with a template letter you can use sending out to parents, carers, family to help during the practical sessions. Students love the sessions, so what is not to like for parents and carers to be involved?

OzHarvest has a lot of volunteers and ambassadors who are willing to support during the FEAST cooking classes. Let us know when you are planning to do a cooking class and we can see if we can send a FEAST ambassador your way.

A core component of the FEAST program is to engage your local community to partake in the FEAST program by inviting parents, caregivers, local sports teams, local high schools and community groups to support the cooking classes. It is a great way for them to get engaged and continue learning at home.

Regular cooking classes can be built into your FEAST Program using the recipe ideas provided by OzHarvest.

The recipes are not part of the unit of inquiry, however they have been integrated into the lesson plans available on the OzHarvest FEAST web portal.

The recipes develop food preparation skills and techniques and support the use of the General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum.

FEAST characters

General

Recently many schools across NSW, SA, QLD and Vic are temporarily closed or are not allowing externals on school grounds in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

OzHarvest FEAST program is continuing to support the communities, students and teachers with whom we work so closely by providing our community with the following offerings:

FEAST curriculum aligned education program

To support our school communities during COVID-19 and beyond OzHarvest adapted the FEAST program to an online program supported by an online teacher training, providing teachers with the confidence to continue to deliver FEAST. Lesson plans, teacher and student resources can be shared online and used in different software that teachers use while home schooling (e.g. Google Classroom).

Online events and webinars

To stay connected and keep our teachers and students engaged, the FEAST team is organising online webinars and events. The webinar and presentations are accessible via Zoom, as a class, or could be accessed from home for all students home-schooling at the moment.

OzHarvest FEAST educators are offering online events and a pre-recorded presentation (available on YouTube) to schools across Australia with the aim of sharing the OzHarvest story, the environmental impact of food waste, and what we can we do to create a sustainable future.

FEAST at Home

Last year OzHarvest launched a new platform called FEAST at Home, hosting online resources, video links and fun activities and recipes for families at home! This platform has become an important and popular part of our free offering, so we have uploaded more resources to cater to the needs of our community.

We have developed fun, easy cooking videos with our FEAST Ambassador Colin Fassnidge. Together with his two daughters, they share the importance of cooking with FEAST; it’s fun, you learn about food waste and lifelong skills! Download the recipes and watch the videos and we can all become that MasterChef!

Thanks to support from corporate and philanthropic organisations, financial support is available to help eligible schools undertake the program. Please get in touch with our FEAST team at [email protected] to see if you are eligible for school funding and get some great tips on how to keep the costs down.

For a class of 30 students to undertake 6 practical lessons the estimate food cost is $300.

Please visit the “Order Resources” page to gain an understanding of the itemised costs for: unlimited access to the FEAST program resources, school kitchen kits, electric frying pan sets, apron packages and teacher training.

 

Yes! The unit is designed in such a way that the teacher is a co-learner and are provided with teacher notes. Most importantly, teachers will find that they learn and make discoveries with the students. So why wait – sign up now!

Part of the FEAST program is the design and creation of a Schools Cookbook. We would strongly recommend presenting the cookbook to the local community or during a school assembly to engage and inspire as the rest of your school. This is also a good way for your students to learn about presenting and engaging others in their journey fighting food waste.

Please make sure you check your junk email to be sure it is not in there. Send an email to [email protected] with your full name, order details and we will aim to resolve your issue as soon as possible.

Share your passion with your community and start your own regional chapter. Engage others and Ask your local school in your area to sign up to the FEAST program by visiting the FEAST website or enrol as a FEAST Ambassador by emailing [email protected]

Next to Education, OzHarvest has 3 other pillars we direct work to, Rescue, Engage and innovate. We organise many events across the country and are always looking for volunteers. Have a look at our website how to get engage and join our journey.

FEAST characters
Register your school