Through the creation of a cookbook 14 Dubbo students have boosted their learning of literacy and numeracy and improved their employment skills.
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Delroy Campus teacher Rachel Cody, together with her ‘Strive’ class, used a $2,000 STEM grant to research and test recipes, before desktop publishing the recipe book and working with the Dubbo Colour Copy Shop to print it.
Ms Cody – who received a Ministerial Award for Excellence last year – taught the 14 students during 2017 in the class in a home-room situation, teaching most core subjects rather than students having different teachers for each one.
The ‘Strive’ class included Bailey Ross, Isabella Fernando, Jadey Beasley, Mackenzie Sampson-Barrett, Melanie Burgess, Lincon Cashen, Kobi Richardson, Ryan Johnson, Theodore Scholz, Shelby Saffy, Steven Murray (SLSO) Amber Mitchell, Kelsey Lucas and Liam Readford.
The main aim of this special mainstream class of Year 8 students was to boost student literacy and numeracy outcomes, and improve their employment skills and future prospects.
Mrs Cody prepared a written application for the Fair Education STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) grant in order to fund the project.
“This grant really provided us with a unique way to document so much of the work completed by the students during the year,” she said.
“My class catered for afternoon tea once a fortnight in the homework centre and we were very grateful to Woolworths Delroy Park for providing us with ingredients every fortnight.
“Researching and trialing recipes directly involved the students in literacy and mathematics, as well as incorporating science.
“We enhanced this with additional technology skills by using a desktop publishing program, with each student required to produce their own recipe document.
“These documents were then collated into the complete cook book and we went on an excursion to the Dubbo Colour Copy Shop to see and learn about the printing process.
“At the conclusion of the year, each student was able to take home the recipe book.”
Mrs Cody said the cook book incorporated a range of finger food recipes.
“There is a selection of sweet and savoury treats, as well as some of the students’ favourite family recipes,” she said.
“The class was very excited to see the end product and take a copy home to their families.
“It really was a hands-on project in all aspects from trialing the recipes to working on the desktop publishing program and seeing the book printed.”