Primary Schoolchildren – Ages 8-11

Aims:

To prepare a nutritionally balanced meal / snack with pulses.

Objectives:

• Students will plan the steps required to create a pulse-based meal or snack.
• Students will prepare, and eat a pulse-based meal or snack.
• Students will promote the benefits (nutritional or otherwise) of their chosen meal.

Resources:

1. Risk assessment (from teacher pack) – cooking with students.
2. A selection of recipe cards (from teacher pack).
3. Cookery planning sheet (from teacher pack).
4. Take home sheets (from teacher pack).

Suggestions for further development:

The lesson provides a perfect opportunity for students to take home the message of the role pulses can play in a healthy diet. Along with the recipe cards, the ‘take home sheet’ in the resource pack will allow families to engage in discussion about how they can incorporate pulses into their diet at home. Students could be encouraged to cook for their families at home and share a pulse based meal.

Alternative recipes can be found at www.pulses.org. Consider selecting a recipe that uses a pulse ingredient grown locally so that the farmer’s story can be discussed in class.

Get the students to ‘plate up’ and take pictures of their food, with the best being submitted to the School Newsletter (including the recipe) to promote healthy eating.

Regular cookery lessons could be built into the curriculum using pulses and other foods to promote the idea of healthy eating.

Class to visit a local supermarket to look for / buy products that have pulses in their ingredients. Followed up by a classroom taste-test.