Rebekah Pace, a first grade teacher at Hillandale Elementary, was awarded a North Carolina Bright Ideas grant through North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives, which funds education grants to North Carolina teachers across the state.
Her grant is worth over $1,000, and will provide a mobile cooking cart to be used and integrated into classroom curriculum school-wide. The grant includes the purchasing of the cart and a variety of tools to prep and cook with such as: measuring cups, cutting boards, peelers, aprons, toaster ovens, and more.
The main goal of her program is to utilize a cooking cart school-wide in classroom lessons, in conjunction with Hillandale’s existing school gardens to teach better nutrition and to show students how to fix healthier snacks and meals. Students will learn to prepare, cook, and serve food. Through cooking, they will learn new math skills, how to follow directions, attention to details, precision, and the importance of making better nutritional choices. The end goals are: teaching the students practical life skills and the value and joy of meaningful work through hands-on experiences, promoting exposure to fresh foods, and providing students with a rich culinary experience.
Classroom cooking is an educational activity that will keep Hillandale students engaged. It is a great way for the students to use what they grow in their grade level gardens, giving them an opportunity to enjoy fresh, seasonal foods while practicing math concepts, reading and comprehension skills, science, and social studies skills, as well as, life skills.
Ms. Pace is a member of the Governor’s Teacher Network 2014-15. Her Governor’s Teacher Network project is on Reciprocal Teaching in Guided Reading. This project involves students having discussions with one another to deepen reading comprehension and higher order thinking skills to question, clarify, predict, and summarize the text. All of these skills are skills that the students will be able to transfer from their Literacy Block to this rich hands-on, culinary experience of her Bright Ideas grant.