Teaching Knife Skills and Safety in High School Labs

Teaching Knife Skills

I am not sure about you but I want to FULLY make sure my students know and understand what is expected of them when it comes to knife safety during our food science labs. I have not desire to find out AFTER a cooking lab that I did a horrible job with my expectations or when teaching knife skills I did not follow through.

So I came up with this fun and versatile lab that helps student practice BEFORE giving them an actual knife. OMG hello win for my classroom! We can learn how to hold a PLASTIC knife and cut up playdough and I am happy, the administration is happy, the school nurse is happy, and the students are happy because they aren’t taking notes! And the kids like doing a hands on lab instead of just talking about it.

Cooking Cutting Techniques

But we don’t just go over how to hold a knife or what to do when you may or may not cut yourself. We also go over different cuts, why different cuts can make a difference on cooking time and how it impacts the recipe. You can see in the picture below what an example of the lab looks like. The students have to look up the different types of cuts and then they create them with playdough.

Food Science Lab Experiments

Food science labs are an essential part of a food science class or truly any Ag class in general. I know that after the completion of this lab my students will be ok working with knives on their own in a group setting in a high pace environment. Through the different station in this lab they learn and work through skills and how to manage their time, which they will need later on during the semester when we complete cooking labs.

This lab is very low prep and the costs are almost nothing. When I was having students practice these cuts on real food items the costs were extremely high and then you had to figure out what to do with the food after the students may or may not have cut it correctly. I know this is a great start to my food science class and a good way to asses the students’ ability to complete labs on time. I love seeing the students discover what they are going to learn and use during the school year!