Activity: Kyushoku

Design and Technology (Key Stage Two)

1a: pupils will generate ideas for a new school lunch, using information from a number of sources including the Internet
1b: children will develop their ideas and explain them clearly, putting together a list of what they hope to achieve
2f: children will follow safe procedures for food safety and hygiene

PSHE (Key Stage Two)

2a: children will research, discuss and debate the topical issue of school lunches
3a: children will investigate what makes a healthy school lunch
2g: children will understand school rules about health and safety

EN3 (Key Stage Two)

1a: children will the correct form for writing a menu
1c: pupils will use language and form appropriate to the reader

MA4 (Key Stage Two)

1g: children will use precise mathematical language and vocabulary for handling data
2b: children will interpret the table used to display ‘favourite school lunch’ information

Ask the children, ‘What did you have for lunch today?’ Have them scribe down everything on their mini whiteboards/scrap paper and share their results with the class.
Discussion: ‘What did you particularly enjoy?’ Why? Was there anything you didn’t like so well? Why? Have children discuss taste, texture etc. They should be able to explain their reasoning rather than simply saying something tastes ‘yum’ or ‘yuck’!
Split the class board into 3 sections: HEALTHY, OCCASIONAL TREAT UNHEALTHY. Ask children to look through their lists and decide which category each element of their lunch belongs to. What made them decide the category?

You may wish to spend some time with the children discussing the elements of a healthy diet and examining different food groups.

Show children the following lunchtime pictures. Explain that Japanese school lunches are called kyushoku.
*Note: The letters in bold type, represent a long vowel sound.

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/kentaro/school/s07_e.html

Hand washing before lunch

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i39_e.htm

School lunch wagon

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i42_e.htm

Serving lunch

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i06_e.htm

School lunch menu

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i40_e.htm

School lunch

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i41_e.htm

Cleaning up

http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/donna/ichinichi/i43_e.htm
Have children describe what they can see. Elements to pick out: children eat in the classroom, all elementary school children will eat a school lunch, all children eat the same meal.
Explain that all menus are carefully chosen, dishes rarely repeat themselves throughout the term and are nutritionally balanced… but there is no choice and children are expected to eat what they are served. What do your pupils think to this system? Is having no, or only a limited choice a good or bad thing? Why?
Explain that although cooks prepare the food, children are responsible for serving, setting up tables and cleaning up. What are the benefits of this system? Are there any disadvantages? Refer back to the pictures again.
Have children look up various recipe sites on the Internet and also look through cookery books to gather together ideas for designing their own healthy, yet delicious school lunch. Tell children to think carefully about the elements they will include in an attempt to create a balanced meal. They should draw and annotate their lunch and write an appealing menu as an accompaniment. They need to encourage others to want to eat their lunch. Perhaps have children look at a selection of menus as a framework to help them. Encourage the use of adjectives to enhance the descriptions.

As an extra, you may wish to have the children write an instructive piece of text by asking them to compile the recipes for their lunches – so making use of bullet points, imperatives etc.

As extension activity, show children the following link:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/6-1/data/index_e.htm
Section 3 displays the results of a survey about favourite school lunches. Have children heard of any of the dishes? Perhaps they could use the Internet to find out. Here is a brief summary:

Miso ramen

usually noodles, pork, bamboo shoots, a hard boiled egg and vegetables (such as leek, bean sprouts and mushrooms) in a hot miso paste soup. The contents are eaten with chopsticks and the remaining soup is drunk with a large spoon.

Curry rice

Japanese curry is generally quite mild. The sauce is thick and common ingredients include onions, carrots and either chicken, beef or pork. This is served along with Japanese white rice and is usually eaten with a spoon.

Kimuchi fried rice

Kimuchi is a Korean style pickled dish, consisting of fermented chilli peppers and usually Chinese cabbage, or radish. It is then highly seasoned with garlic, ginger and salt. Kimuchi can be eaten on its own, or added to rice or other dishes such as savoury style pancakes.
In this case, kimuchi and other ingredients such as egg, meat, and vegetables are stir-fried with rice in a dish which the Japanese refer to as 'kimuchi chahan'.

Ja Ja men

Korean style noodles, topped with slightly spicy pork mince and leeks.

Bibimbop

A Korean dish consisting of mixed vegetables (spinach, mushrooms, carrots, bean sprouts etc) and meat (beef) served with a hot pepper sauce over rice and topped with a fried egg.

gyoza

small Chinese style dumplings filled with pork mince, cabbage, leeks, garlic and ginger. They are fried and served with a dipping sauce.
Why not then do a similar survey of your own school lunches. What are the most and least popular dishes? Is there a marked difference between girls’ and boys’ choices?
Have children use the results to display them in a variety of ways—perhaps as a bar graph, venn diagram or pie chart. Have children remembered to label the axes and give their graphs a title? Are children able to interpret their data and make comparisons?

Display children’s pictures on the classboard as a kind of gallery. Have children gather round and examine the pictures. Are there any menus which look particularly enticing? Why? Are they healthy? Could anything be done to improve them further? Have children give constructive criticisms.
Which menus use particularly good descriptive language? Pick out useful adjectives and list them on the board.
Perhaps have a class vote and decide on one or two of the menus to actually try out. Correct health and safety procedures should be followed. You could even have children prepare and serve the food to one another and eat in the classroom as the Japanese children do. Alternatively you may wish to try some Japanese cooking with the class. Easy to follow recipes can be found at: http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/cook.html
If trying out a Japanese style lunch, have children say the following greeting before they begin their meal: ‘itadakimasu—いただきます.’ This is a humble way of expressing that you are about to eat. Perhaps the nearest Western equivalent would be bon appetit.