New Education Toolkit To Encourage Healthy Behaviours In Nottingham Schools

New Education Toolkit: In the schools of Nottingham, a novel educational toolkit to promote healthy behaviours in children is undergoing testing.

The ‘Nutri Kit’ was developed by the Nutrition Advisory Team with assistance from the Food Innovation Centre at the University of Nottingham. As part of a pilot programme, it is being offered to 30 institutions across the region.

Nutri Kit is intended for children ages 4 to 13, with the pilot materials designed for sixth graders. The toolkit includes engaging and interactive teaching materials covering mind, body, and health, and invites children to consider how dietary and lifestyle choices affect the local community and the planet. It seeks to increase young people’s knowledge and self-assurance in order to inform their decisions and actions, and to encourage them to assume greater responsibility for their own health outcomes.

The materials were developed by experts in the fields of education, nutrition, sports instruction, physiotherapy, and cognitive behaviour therapy. This initiative has been supported by the Food Innovation Centre at the University of Nottingham, which has also produced some of the videos in the kit that explain the science behind bodily processes such as digestion.

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New Education Toolkit To Encourage Healthy Behaviours

Catherine and Lydia, pupils in food science, appear in one of the videos about digestion.

Catherine Child, a third-year Food Sciences student, and Lydia Stokes created the videos. Catherine stated, “I have always believed that it is important to educate the younger generation about their food choices. The NAT is an excellent opportunity for this to occur, and I was thrilled to be a part of the production of educational videos that will be sent to local elementary schools.”

Teachers are encouraged to use the pilot materials as part of a health week or as one-time activities over a number of weeks. Recognising that human health is a complex mixture of biological, social, psychological, behavioural, and economic factors, the materials also support the teaching of physical and mental health. Videos featuring animation, infographics, and science complement written resources and detailed lesson plans. After the pilot programme concludes, Nutri Kit modules will be available for purchase.

Details on Toolkit

The teaching and learning toolset was created by Claire King, a former primary school educator and principal with a background in psychology. She desires a deeper comprehension of the relationship between nutrition, cerebral development, and behaviour. She stated, “From my experience as a teacher, I know that providing children with knowledge is essential to assisting them comprehend and alter their behaviour. I’m also aware that instructors need engaging, ready-to-use materials, which is where Nutri Kit comes in, as it contains everything needed to deliver fun, informative lessons that we hope will result in lasting change not only for children but also for their families.”

This project has been extremely exciting to work on, and it’s fantastic to see the new education toolkit complete and available to schools. At the Food Innovation Centre, we are eager to support such start-ups, and we were able to contribute our scientific knowledge and expertise to the videos, which we hope children will appreciate and learn from.

The material has already been evaluated by Dr. Annie Blisset, Food Innovation Technologist at the Food Innovation Centre Haydn Primary School in Nottingham. Joshua Grimshaw, a sixth-grade educator, remarked, “The Nutri Kit resources were exceptionally informative, and the students were so engaged in the lessons.” They brought entirely new information into the classroom and provided our students with knowledge about diet and staying healthy that they did not previously possess. Children completed the sessions eager to learn more and anticipating future lessons.”

All participating institutions are doing so as part of The Nutrition Advisory Team’s market research. To obtain feedback, they will be interviewed by a student from the University of Nottingham.

Claire continues, “Student feedback is valued, and we look forward to hearing from teachers about how students reacted to the resources and how they can be improved before we make them more widely accessible.”