School dinners!

I teach some students who really struggle with literacy. So imagine this. You've tried, let's say.....ice skating! You have a lesson every day and you never manage to stay on your feet. After three years, you can get on your feet, but you fall down. Three years later, you're still having an hour's lesson every day! You can almost stand up but you have to keep hanging on to the side. Get the picture? So after six years, and a lesson a day........you're still crap at ice skating. You know what? I would give up!!!! Well, you can't!!!! You get a reprieve when you reach 11 years old and they only make you have three hours of ice skating lessons a week.

By now, everyone else is whirling around like Torville and Dean and you're still falling on your bum, hanging onto the side and shuffling one foot after the other, your arms stretched out, just trying to balance and stay upright. Not only that, but you've been tested to find out? Yep, still crap!!!

So you reach puberty, everything gets bigger, smellier and hairier and no surprise; the ice skating is still crap! Every time you get those boots on, or get near the ice or hear so much as the first bars of 'Bolero', expletives issue from your mouth as if Gordon Ramsay was telling you what to say. Until someone says...............enough!


Well, this English teacher said enough! Now we're going to do something different! Me and my students are now going to do what we can to improve our literacy and numeracy........................in the kitchen!!!! We will improve by: weighing, shopping, measuring, portion controlling and slicing into fractions.

We will read ingredients and instructions, measure out and cook something to eat. As a reward for our Herculean efforts to stay upright on the ice................or should I say read a recipe. We will eat what we have cooked. I've got permission, it's OK! we're going to cook!

I like cooking and they like eating, so I think we'll be onto a winner. Yes, they will still fall down on the ice and they will still have to hold onto the side, but something just might ease the pain. I may get sworn at slightly less or at least I won't hear what they say and they will have a spoonful of homemade soup in their mouths!