Characteristics of good practice in teaching food and nutrition education in additional needs

The Characteristics of good practice in teaching food and nutrition education to pupils with additional needs course has been specifically created for trainee, new, non-specialist and more experienced school staff throughout the UK.

The course usually costs £120. However, Food – a fact of life is making 2,000 complimentary access codes available to trainee and practising school staff.

Note: To ensure that the complimentary places are used, any course that is not activated, or that is not completed within three months of initial registration, will be deleted to allow another teacher the opportunity to undertake the course.

The online course supports the Food teaching in primary and secondary schools: a framework of knowledge and skills – backed by government.

This online course will be useful for trainee, new and more experienced teachers of pupils with additional needs across all phases, in mainstream or special schools, across the UK.

The British Nutrition Foundation gratefully acknowledges the support for this work from the Savoy Educational Trust.

There are 12 characteristics covered in this course:

• Developing professional competence.
• Taking a whole school approach.
• Knowing your pupils
• Teaching the curriculum.
• Developing skills for independent living.
• Developing skills for work.
• Running practical food lessons.
• Establishing good food hygiene and safety practices.
• Developing practical food skills.
• Exploring where food comes from.
• Healthy eating.
• Making choices.

Each module includes a short test, providing you with feedback on your progress. On successful completion of a final assessment, a personalised certificate is created, useful as evidence for your professional development and performance management. (The final assessment may be repeated). The course will take approximately 3-4 hours to complete but does not have to be completed all at once. You can complete the course at your own pace – there is no time limit.

This course aims to:

• define the key characteristics of good practice that are specific to teaching food and nutrition to pupils with additional needs;
• exemplify these characteristics of good practice in UK schools, both special and mainstream;
• identify exemplary practice and the school staff who could take responsibility for leading or enabling the practice, e.g. governor/head teacher/senior leadership team; curriculum lead/coordinator; special needs coordinator (SENCo); or class teacher/teaching assistant;
• highlight the key features of achieving these characteristics, showing how these can be put into practice, with case studies and suggestion of how to develop these for the future;
• support teachers that teach pupils with additional needs, especially those that are newly qualified;
• enable practising teachers to audit and reflection on their own practice, to plan and implement personal and professional development goals;
• provide signposts to free editable resources for use in the classroom along with sources of further support and information.

Trainee, new and more experienced school staff across all phases.