Written by Aziza Malik, Kate Mattina, and Sara Brown, educators at Champlain Elementary in Burlington, Vermont
Every student carries a story about food: an ode to a favorite dish, a treasured family recipe, or a memory of a celebratory meal. This toolkit, created for grades 3-6, offers 21 lessons organized into three phases for helping students explore identity, culture, and belonging through food.
- Phase 1: Identity Exploration:Students look inward by examining their values, traditions, and cultural roots through digital selfies, "I Stand For" statements, word cloud portraits, and heritage poem videos.
- Phase 2: Food Narratives: Students uncover the meals and dishes that shape their lives. They'll hear stories from local, regional, and global voices, then find and shape their own. The phase culminates in community storytelling where students share their food stories with family.
- Phase 3: Collaborative Cookbook:The class compiles a cookbook of meaningful recipes. Students learn the craft of recipe writing and discover how cookbooks can offer insights in the lives of one another.
You can use all three phases together, spread across the year, or just one if that's what works best for you and your students.
Read more about the collaborative cookbook process on our blog.
You can preview the publication on this page and download the full publication below.
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