Food, Love and Community Feed

The Year 5 pupils and staff of St Teresa of Lisieux Catholic Primary School, have begun a remarkable journey into exploring how to get the best out of learning.

In order to engage pupils, enthuse them and inspire them to learn, staff have been dedicating time to careful planning of how to cover the curriculum in a way that connects the learning in the classroom to the real world pupils find themselves living in.

All curriculum teaching has therefore been focused around a REAL project, with an outcome at the end of the term, which offers a service to the community, and a legacy that will continue into the future.

This Term, Year 5 pupils have been exploring a question of ‘What riches lie in poverty’. From this open ended starting point discussion, their learning took them towards exploring the contrasting riches and poverty in Brazil.

From the colourful riches of sound, food, music and parades of the Rio Carnival, to the sad reality of the lives of street children, children explored the unfairness of the world we live in, along the way beginning to consider what we can do about it? The shift of focus then naturally moved from South America to Europe and the U.K. where they explored poverty and riches closer to home.

Some shocking facts and figures regarding poverty in the U.K. prompted the pupils to seek a wider understanding of what support there is within U.K. communities for those suffering with financial difficulties, and what part can we play? From this the Community Feed Event was born!

As part of their learning in preparation for the event, children wrote letters to supermarkets asking for donations of food; pitched their ideas to Tesco managers; visited a local Food Hub and Food Bank to help out in the community; wrote leaflets educating others on the topic of poverty; volunteered to work alongside the Liverpool Real Junk Food Project prepping food for other community events and linking up with professional chefs, who taught them how cooking healthy cooking is possible on a budget. As part of their Novel Study, pupils have read and discussed a wonderful novel ‘Just Juice’, by Karen Hesse, prompting deep discussions about generation poverty and those who feel disenfranchised for the community.

The Community Feed, which pupils had worked towards setting up, was named ‘Food, Love and Community Feed’ to reflect the biggest learning that they could possibly have gained. Community is key! Community is where it all starts. A community, which embraces all, is a community which will drive positive change. Change for the better. Change for the good of all. Children have learned that with a strong community spirit we are all surrounded in richness, no matter what our backgrounds are.

So….Pupils and staff of St Teresa would love to invite you to a celebration of learning, love and community spirit. ‘The Food, Love and Community Feed’, will be taking place on Tuesday 4th April, and will be a fantastic opportunity for our community to enjoy free, warm delicious food prepared by the children; explore the amazing Edible Playground where we have been growing our own fruit and vegetables; take part in cookery lessons with professional chefs; learn about the great work of food banks and have the opportunity to benefit from debt advice and money management advisors.

Most importantly the community will have an opportunity to come together and celebrate the joy, happiness and richness that love and togetherness can bring to us all!