Back to school: healthy eating and food safety teaching resources

suzannetrain Published September 12, 2019

FSS Education Marketing Manager, Tanya Olmeda-Hodge, writes about our education resources and the benefits they have for teachers.

As the new school year has just begun, I thought it would be a good opportunity to offer a little reminder about our range of education resources and to share some feedback from teachers who’re using them. These healthy eating and food safety activities were created by FSS experts and teachers as a ‘go to’ for food and health learning.

FSS is committed to supporting teachers to help make lesson planning easier and deliver engaging, fun content for Curriculum for Excellence food and health topics in primary and secondary schools.

Our hope is that by using these resources, children and young people will be encouraged to improve their diets and food hygiene practices.

The resources are free and can be used in a classroom and at home. Some of the activities are more hands-on such as What’s in my Basket?, where you learn about different food by answering questions, and Stop the Germs!, an experiment, discussion and worksheet to learn about bacteria and cross contamination. The resources are compatible with SmartBoards, tablets, desktops and laptops. Some activities use food cards and each topic includes teacher background notes and what you need for each activity.

Here’s some of the positive feedback we’ve received from teachers who use the activities with their classes:

Mhairi Dalglish, teacher at St Joseph’s RC Primary School, said: “I use the FSS resources for planning and teaching across health and wellbeing. It is simple to search for by age and stage using the drop-down menu, and the resources are well-organised within each stage.

“The children enjoy the lessons which vary from whole-class interactive sessions to individual tasks. I have been asked more than once for the website name so that the children can show their parents and play the games at home.”

Audrey Blair, home economics teacher at Meldrum Academy, said: “The FSS educational resources for secondary school are excellent, very easy to use and access, and extremely coherent. They are linked to the benchmarks which helps with planning courses and progression.

“The resources are not solely reliant on technology which is a good thing as it’s not always possible to access computers/laptops in every class. The food cards have so many uses and can be used from S1 through to S6. The information on each topic is reputable and correct which is so important, and there are lots of interactive activities to help keep learning fun yet relevant.”

If you have any questions about resources, please don’t hesitate to get in touch: resources@fss.scot – I’d love to hear from you.