This highly relevant lesson offers a major contribution to the Every Child Matters agenda on staying healthy, as well as picking up the Jamie Oliver’s school meals initiative. After a fairly orthodox start, looking at the reasons for the legislation, the lesson moves the emphasis to enquiry as students are asked to predict what effect the provision of school meals had over the next few months and years The debate about the value of school meals is then brought right up to date.
I am grateful to the National Archives Learning Curve for permission to use their copy of the graph for Bradford schools in 1907 which stimulated this lesson. Go to www.nationalarchives.gov.uk for further examples of their outstanding learning resources. The Learning Curve section of the site is a fantastic resource for KS4 teachers and brings something very different to the GCSE classroom.
Learning objectives
- students learn at least three reasons for the liberal government’s legislation on School meals;
- they predict what impact the provision might have on pupils’ body weight and compare with the real figures;
- they then evaluate the short and long-term impact of school meal provision on children’s health
Starter
Students look at slide 2 as they come
