Ms Juliane Herold’s grade 3 class ended their school year with a scrumptious friendly class cooking competition: Vegan Master Chef.

Ms Juliane began this annual event last year as a fun and memorable way for students to achieve a range of different learning outcomes including literacy, numeracy, research skills and teamwork.

With great enthusiasm, students planned the entire event over a period of one month. Ms Juliane explained what vegan food is (no animal products) and the students took it from there. They developed planning documents where they created their recipes, worked out measurements, prepared ingredient lists, and then shopped for the food they would need.

The class was divided into teams of four. Each group consisted of a chef, a server, a chopper/cutter and a cleaner. Being assigned a specific and defined task allowed each team member to learn the importance of roles and responsibilities, while also learning how important it is to collaborate and help one another, in order to achieve common goals.

As they were going to be using cutting tools and small appliances, such as toasters and blenders, students also had to prepare safety guidelines and cleaning instructions.

Judging this year’s competition were Ms Juliane, Mr Adam and TK’s Digital Literacy Coach Tim Studlo.

The competition saw each team preparing a three course meal for the judges. They had 25 minutes to prepare their appetiser, 30 minutes to make their main course and 20 minutes to create dessert. This year’s delicacies included guacamole dip with carrot chips, salad with fresh herbs, chickpea curry, and pasta with various sauces. Our judges enjoyed cocoa pudding, banana splits, fruit salad and more for dessert! Judging for his second year, Mr Studlo described the food as “amazing” and said the event just keeps getting better.

Contestants were judged on a number of criteria such as food presentation and taste, cooperation, and manners. Bonus points were awarded if teams took extra steps, for example, when servers were particularly attentive.

Special mention goes to grade 4 student Adya Gupta, this year’s event manager. Using her experience from last year’s competition, Adya was able to help supervise students and give feedback to judges on what she observed.

This year’s winning team was Girls’ Cooking Power + Aarav and the runner up was team of Mind Blowing Chefs. We are incredibly proud of all of these young culinary experts, who showed a remarkable level of maturity throughout this entire learning journey.

We look forward to seeing what Ms Juliane cooks up for next year!