Skill Mastery
Cooking Up Fun recipes are designed to support skill mastery. Depending on the choice and sequencing of recipes, new skills can be introduced while other skills are repeated.
Repetition of skills provides practice that leads to mastery. Being able to handle a variety of foods is important. A skill with one food can become a new experience when applied to another food. For example, handling a knife to cut a potato will feel different than handling a knife to cut a banana. Peeling a potato will require a different technique than peeling an orange.
Food skills include the kinesthetic skills of specific food preparation tasks (cutting, measuring, mixing), as well as the ability to read, interpret, and apply information relevant to the task of preparing food. Learning to read a recipe and follow directions can be challenging for many young people.
If literacy is an issue in a group, facilitators can guide participants through recipe preparation with oral instruction. Or they can combine oral instruction with visual demonstration, talking through the preparation process. It helps if the facilitator has a workstation within the group rather than doing lecture (head-of-the-class) type demonstrations. Keeping instructions closely connected to active participation can increase attention and ability to apply the information.
Cooking Up Fun recipes require participants to handle real kitchen tools such as sharp knives rather than plastic serrated knives. Facilitators create a learning environment that challenges participants to reach higher levels of skill mastery at an appropriate pace for the group. |
Cooking Up Fun!