A huge and very excited welcome back to all PhunkyFoods schools; old and new! We hope that you're all settling back in to school life and have some exciting things planned for the coming term.
We have so much to share with you, and whilst we were tentatively able to start visiting schools again towards the end of the last academic year, we are very much looking forward to doing much more in person this year! We'll start this newsletter with a quick reminder of what's available and where to start, we'll highlight what's new, and we'll also take a peek at some upcoming events that you might like to get involved with.
Just a little reminder that our Home Learning Content is still available to all of our schools and families, so that as and when you do have children having to islolate they can still access some fun PhunkyFoods health lifestyle activities and learning resources.
We hope you find these newsletters useful as we move throughout the school year. Please do give us feedback - tell us what you want to hear more (or less) of, and do encourage colleagues to sign up too if you find it useful. There's a link to sign up on our website, or your colleagues can simply email us at help@phunkyfoods.com
A quick reminder of what's available and where to start!
Log in to the website at www.phunkyfoods.com - if you've forgotten your username or password just call 01628 486800 or email: help@phunkyfoods.com
On the website you can find:
- Early Years Programme
- SEN Programme
- Whole School Activities - healthy lifestyle assemblies and workshops
- Topic Based Activities - with healthy lifestyle messaging
- Healthy Eating | Physical Activity PPA solution
- Recipes - perfect for the classroom
- Mindfulness Exercises - for Early Years, KS1 and KS2
- Phunky15 Activities
And don't forget if you're running a breakfast, after-schools, gardening or cookery club there's plenty of resources for those too!
There's a fantastic case study from one of our Cumbria schools below - useful for an idea of how to implement the programme in your school. But if you get stuck or just simply want some advice on where to start please do call us at the office. The number is 01628 486800, or email help@phunkyfoods.com
COMING SOON... LAUNCHING NEW D&T SCHEME OF WORK
The way our schools and teachers use the PhunkyFoods Programme has been changing over the years, and we've been listening! Whilst a number of our legacy primary schools still use the programme as a PPA solution, or through whole school activities, many of our old and new schools are now wanting to deliver our material through the main curriculum, be it D&T, PSHE or science.
So now we're launching our new D&T schemes of work - they will be live for October 2021 - so please keep a look out and give them a try.
These new schemes of work have been written as a partnership between our local school support workers, who know exactly what their schools want, and our in-house consultant teacher, Hannah. The new schemes of work for each year group, with progression across the key stages, are based on the requirements of the English Design and Technology: Cooking and Nutrition curriculum. Each scheme of work is also linked to the Scottish and Welsh Curricula.
We hope you enjoy delivering them and would love to hear your feedback.
PARENT ENGAGEMENT
With health and wellbeing currently riding so high on the national agenda, parent engagement has never been more important. Evidence tells us that parent engagement is key for changing and maintaining real behaviour change around healthier lifestyles for our children. And whilst our local coordinators are keen to get back to their vital face-to-face role in communicating healthy lifestyle messages to parents, it is important that our schools also maintain contact with their wider communities during this time.
We recently launched our new parents communication area of the website (www.phunkyfoods.co.uk/parent-communication/). This section of the website will support you in communicating health messages to your parents and families. This section is not for parents, as it is password protected, but instead provides your school with suggested content to include in your termly newsletters and/or weekly email communications for your families. There are also display ideas, images and assets for each health message. Depending on what your focus is in school each term - you can choose which health messages are most relevant to helping support your parents.
EVENT FOCUS
British Food Fortnight is running from September 18th - October 3rd. A fun annual event to get your class or school involved in. The website has lots of free resources for schools to help celebrate British food and drink, and plenty of ideas for linking with local farmers, food growers, chefs or retailers.
Bike to School Week (September 27th - October 1st). During the week, schools encourage families to cycle or scoot to school and beyond. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate cycling and scooting and the positive impact it has on children’s health and wellbeing as well as the environment. It's free to take part and to download the posteres and classroom resources.
Sugar Awareness Week (8th - 14th November). Help raise awareness of the issues around excessive sugar intakes for your children by running PhunkyFoods Snack Attack or Drain Your Drinks Assemblies or Workshops in school. Your local PhunkyFoods support worker will be pleased to help out - just get in touch!
National School Meals Week (8th - 12th November). Keep an eye out on social media and on their website for more details on themes and resources for this years National School Meals Week - celebrating all that is great about school meals!
I first heard about the PhunkyFoods Programme from other local teachers when I attended a PE conference for Staffordshire schools in summer 2018. I loved the look of the resources and wanted to find out more. I knew how much our school needed to focus on healthy lifestyles and so I contacted my local Phunky Foods Co-ordinator who set up a meeting to discuss the programme.
After signing up, I completed a health check and action plan with our Co-ordinator. We needed to boost our curriculum with more food prep opportunities and better cookery equipment, to improve our dining room experience and to increase parental engagement around healthy lifestyles. A particular focus has been packed lunches. We had started to raise awareness of the need for healthier packed lunches, but we had received a lot of negative criticism from parents, and I wanted to make sure that this was handled in a positive way.
In November 2017, I attended the Phunky Foods Training Day, and our Co-ordinator then attended a school staff meeting to show members of staff how to use the website to help plan lessons incorporating healthy lifestyle information. As a result of this, we have now incorporated some of the Phunky Foods resources into our healthy eating / science / PSHE curriculum. This term all staff are being asked to deliver unit 2 of the Phunky Foods healthy eating curriculum on dates when outdoor PE is not possible.
Phunky Foods helped us to write a new school food policy and packed lunch policy. This has now been launched with parents. As part of the new policy consultation, parents were invited to attend a Love Your Lunchbox Workshop with their children. A workshop was held in March and attended by 10 parents and 12 children who enjoyed making tuna cous cous together. There was some great feedback from the event:- “My sons didn’t realise lunch could be so fun and different, and one even tried something new…. And I’ve learnt to make more of an effort instead of being lazy and going for convenient sandwiches”
After boosting our existing stock of cookery equipment I have continued the focus on food prep, by running a weekly after school cookery club with 8 children at a time. This has been very successful and we have made a variety of healthy recipes.
Last year, at our Christmas Fayre, Phunky Foods helped us to run a fruity Christmas tree stall. This year I will be running another healthy food prep stall making Christmas wands with the children. Our Phunky Foods Co-ordinator will also be attending our Y2 Christmas production to engage with families around healthy eating, and to hand out fruit to parents as they arrive. She will be helped by our newly recruited Phunky Ambassadors. I have recently chosen 6 year 5 children to be our Ambassadors this year, and I have trained and supported them with guidance from our Co-ordinator. They will be carrying out various Eatwell activities this year.
As a school we are now committed to the health and wellbeing of our pupils and we are currently working towards Healthy School Status. We recently underwent an Ofsted inspection, and inspectors were very interested to hear about our Phunky Foods work. We were graded Good for the first time in 11 years and the Ofsted report opens with the following comment:- “John Wheeldon Primary Academy prioritises pupils’ health and well-being alongside their academic work”
JOHN WHEELDON PRIMARY ACADEMY, STAFFORD
JANUARY 2020
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