Anna-Marie B

Live Kitchen 

A resource used in my Year 1 classroom whilst on GPP this system allows the children to pick their meal for Dinner each day.

Each morning Live Kitchen was to be placed on the Interactive Whiteboard so that children could find their name, select it and then select the meal they wished to have for their dinner that day. Some children picked the meals for the whole week, prior to coming to school on Monday, and some children picked their meals each morning from home but the majority of the children carried it out in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live Kitchen is a system set up by the company that provide the meals for school and I beleive is a fantastic piece of software that all schools should implement. I have been in schools previously where children have help up dinner queues standing there trying to decide what they want once they had seen what was available at the hatch. This removes this as the children pick their option in the morning, the orders are automatically sent through to the kitchen informing the kitchen staff on the amouts of portions needed each day. This is a fantastic way to carry out mealtimes, especially now the school has become two form entry and thus more children need feeding each day.

 

The children usually have 3 options to select from each day, including both hot and cold options. Some of the options available to the children during my time there were Pasta Bolgonaise, Roast Chicken Wrap, Fish Fillet, Meat and Potato Pie, Jacket Potato (with 3 options; cheese, tuna mayonniase or beans) and Sandwiches (with 4 options; Ham, Cheese, Tuna Mayo and Egg Mayo).

 

In addition to this ICT usage in the classroom this system is also used within the dining hall. Children have to line up in the hall for their dinner each day, staggered for both Key Stages, and the children have to look at the signs above each hatch which display which meal is being distributed from each side. The children then have to line up in the correct queue, once they get to the front they have to press their name again on the screen next to the hatch. This then shows the kitchen staff behind which meal they ordered and the dinnerladies can then pass this through. This speeds up the process remarkably, particularly when the child has selectd a meal which could have 4 different options to it. For example if a child has selected a Jacket Potato with Beans, once they press their name on the screen the dinnerladies can see these immediaitely and know what option is required on top without the child having to decide there and then.

 

Overall I feel this is a fantastic way of including ICT awareness into school, on a large scale, and the children really engage well with the system and manage to carry out their requirement of selecting their meal each day without fuss and quickly.