BNF launches new remote learning hub to support primary and secondary school pupils learning at home

Food – a fact of life, the British Nutrition Foundation’s (BNF) education programme for schools*, has launched a new remote learning hub, the Food – a fact of life (FFL) Classroom, which comprises a range of free cross-curricular resources and activities for primary and secondary school pupils studying at home.

The FFL Classroom hosts a wide range of free, easy to access resources, covering seven learning approaches: everyday learning; finding out and exploring; being active; worksheets; interactive activities and quizzes; being creative (through writing, arts and crafts); and cooking. The FFL Classroom also provides tips and best practice advice for parents and carers.

Resources focus on key food themes within curriculum areas, such as where food comes from, cooking, and healthy eating, but also offer a range of opportunities for cross-curricular learning. Many resources and activities use food as a vehicle to provide engaging learning via subjects such as: numeracy, literacy, humanities, science, PHSE/health and wellbeing, D&T, religious education, and art.

The FFL Classroom is providing an activity or resource for every day, from now until 1 September 2020, with new sets of resources being launched weekly throughout the coming months. Each resource has been designed so that pupils can use them on their own and without parental/carer or teacher supervision (where appropriate) and are also accompanied by guidance for parents and carers.

Roy Ballam, Managing Director and Head of Education, BNF, comments: “To support the millions of parents and carers across the UK who are now facing the challenge of ensuring their children can continue their education, while all of the family is working and staying at home, we’ve reviewed our existing Food – a fact of life content, and have adapted and created new resources so they are easy to access, and simple to complete in a home environment.

“Food affects everyone, and food and nutrition education should remain a key part of your child’s school day, even during these strange times. As such, each resource will use elements of food science, healthy eating or cooking to form the basis of the activity, while teaching other valuable skills. The resources provide a variety of learning approaches – it’s not just about sitting down with pen and paper, learning should be exciting and should challenge a young person in different ways each day. By working together, we can help ensure UK pupils stay engaged, entertained and enthusiastic over the coming weeks and months, while helping to protect ourselves from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Challenging pupils across all areas of the curriculum, the ‘Everyday learning experiences’ section of the FFL Classroom includes activities like: “calculate how many times you’d have to walk around a room in your house to reach 10,000 steps” and, testing science knowledge, “Finding out why toast goes brown””. In the ‘Being creative’ section, tasks include “Describe the life, growth and death of a food poisoning bacteria by writing a story or poem, or drawing a cartoon, or storyboard” and “Create a health and safety poster for your kitchen at home.”

Commenting on the new hub, Robert Meyer, a parent based in London, said: “These are really testing times for everyone, and parents with young children are facing particular challenges. Juggling childcare and work is difficult at the best of times. With the extra home-schooling demands thrown into the mix I’m sure many parents like me are struggling to cope. That’s why I’m looking forward to trying out these new resources from BNF. I think they will help teach the children important information about healthy eating, but as importantly for parents like me, keep them occupied!”

Elaine Gardiner, PGDE Coordinator for Home Economics at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow also comments: “I always encourage our student teachers to use BNF’s excellent materials in their classrooms. It is fantastic that BNF has been able to adapt, modify and develop its resources for this period of “remote learning”, with a plethora of activities that can be easily accessed by learners, parents/carers and teachers.”

In addition to the new FFL Classroom, Food – a fact of life hosts a range of free resources, such as: support for children aged 3-16 years; information on where food comes from, cooking and healthy eating; a free online nutritional analysis tool; a range of recipes, which can be filtered (e.g. non-cook, uses potatoes); videos and interactive quizzes; and a parental engagement area.

Allison Candy, a Subject Officer from examination board, WJEC, comments: “I have always recommended BNF resources to teachers in England and Wales who have delivered WJEC and Eduqas qualifications, so I am delighted to hear that we will soon have new learning activities available for children to continue learning about food when they are not in the usual learning environment. It will be great to get parents and carers as well as teachers actively involved in fun educational activities which will benefit all. Well done!”

To access the FFL Classroom please visit: https://www.foodafactoflife.org.uk/whole-school/remote-learning/