During this Term in commerce, Year 9 students were focusing on a topic about independence.
This unit teaches them how to be financially stable when leaving home. They were recently challenged to create a meal within a small budget. They were required to research supermarkets to find the most cost-effective deals and work as a team to complete a full meal within a $20 budget.
Here is what some of our students had to say
The Good…
The value of this activity is that it teaches us how to be responsible for our own cooking and livelihood, developing our independence skills in preparation for moving out of home. Some good things we found in this activity was the ability to determine what we cook, how we cook it and who we cook it with, which makes the activity more group-based and ensures that we are the one to take responsibility for all aspects of the activity. These aspects include the recipe, ingredients, materials and cleaning up. We really enjoyed the interaction of the teachers and how we could have conversations about the food and how to cook it. It was also really cool how we could be surrounded by our peers and see what they were cooking as well which made the whole activity a lot more enjoyable for everyone. We also learnt how to work under a budget which is a very useful skill in life, not only in cooking but also in financial decisions/ budgeting.
The Bad…
There were very few aspects that we would change as the activity was thought out quite well. Everything worked and there were no issues for anyone in the group or for what we heard. The preparation for the cooking activity was quite limited and there was not much information on how to cook properly which led people to over-cooking and under-cooking food, but that aspect of cooking is only found in food technology.
The better…
The activity was very good but there are a few things that could be altered about the activity that would improve the overall experience. One of these includes an increase in budget as many groups found that the $5 per person was hard to manage which limited meal options. For example, an increase from $15 to $20 for three people. Another improvement would be the preparation for the cooking like how to use the equipment and how to cook. They might have been in the training courses but it would be beneficial to revise it to aid with the students' competency in cooking basics. One final improvement that would have been incredible at the awareness of the activity is the unitisation of previous year's examples as inspiration. It would have given ideas to students about what they might like to cook and what our meals would look like at those price points.
Written by Liam S, Jenson R and Shaun W
