Company profile

School Meals Investigators™ (SMI®) is a primary school curriculum based interactive teaching aid that contributes to the improvement in child health and wellbeing outcomes, whilst engaging children and parents/carers in providing feedback on the current meal provision within their school. The programme also contributes to wider learning outcomes including IT, citizenship, numeracy and literacy.

The module is aimed at upper primary school age and can be taught in three sessions with a ‘home work’ element to capture parent/carer views and perceptions on ‘healthy eating’ and the school meals service in particular.

The lesson plan is based upon children learning about the relationship between food, health and wellbeing together with how/why schools are subject to inspection relating to the provision of food in schools.

During the first lesson, children are given a short presentation explaining broadly the inspection process and elements that make up a ‘whole school approach’ to food in schools. They go on to share their understanding about healthy eating and nutrition and during the second lesson, also consider other factors (including the dining environment) that may affect their decision to use, or not use, the schools meal service.

The children then devise their own class questionnaire based on a provided template which is completed by them as a homework exercise, during which they also ‘interview’ their parents/carers for their views on school meals. In a third session, they go in pairs to other classes and ‘facilitate’ the completion of their survey questionnaire by younger pupils in the school, before returning to summarise and discuss the findings of their ‘investigation’. The School then forwards all completed questionnaires to RGL for further analysis.

A complete ‘Classroom Teachers Pack’ is provided for every Year 6 class which contains everything needed to deliver the module including a three part DVD presentation, a set of healthy eating and nutrition ‘Prompt Cards’ & ‘Factoids’, a survey questionnaire template, sets of teacher’s notes to accompany the DVD presentation, pre-printed Homework questionnaires, interview/survey technique materials and a web based research & resources guide for teachers.

Apart from its educational value, the programme produces a valuable assessment of children’s perceptions on a school by school basis and this is reported back to each class through posters and electronic presentations. Analysed data is also reported back at school, local authority, regional and national levels including actions and observations appropriate to each.

School Meals Investigators™, including teacher induction, data analysis and report back at individual school and Local Authority level, can be delivered at a cost of less than £700 per school.

Wales / England Office

Redbrook Garve Limited
Brewery Yard
Redbrook
Monmouthshire
NP25 4LU

Tel: 01600 719229
Fax: 01600 719049
E-mail: enquiries@rgl.org.uk

Key contacts for the England/Wales office

David Knapman (Joint Managing Director)
dknapman@rgl.org.uk
07774 680132

Julia Wareham
jwareham@rgl.org.uk