Ready Steady Cook! Developing Exam Skills

I have been tweeting about this amazing activity and due to a number of people asking me about it I decided it was time for a blog.

Ready Steady Cook was an activity that was ‘showcased’ by Mark Mitchell at the recent tutor2u CPD conference, ‘(Probably) the Best Business Lessons Ever’. Mark therefore deserves all the plaudits, throwing of flowers etc for this activity that has become a staple of my teaching….

For those unfamiliar with the programme, Ready Steady Cook involves contestants providing chefs with a bag of ingedients. The chefs must then work against the clock to cook a meal using the given ingredients.

Ready Steady Cook uses the same format. Students are given a ‘bag’ of words and they need to construct an answer using the ‘ingredients’.

So, for a recent Year 10 lesson. I put the following question on the IWB. Explain the benefits to Business X of providing good customer service.

The students were then given the following ‘ingredients’. Customer service, because, therefore, competitition, therefore, reputation, sales, profit, because, differentiation.

This really stretched the students as they needed to use all of the above words to construct an answer. I also differentiate this activity by giving the more able students far more ingredients (sometimes up to 30) and for the less able fewer words and then asking them to use a minimum of say, 5 words.

Another nice touch is to play the ready steady cook music as the students are working.

This activity also works very well for A2. For AQA BUSS4 I am using ready steady cook to develop students their paragraph writing skills, giving them a benefit or limitation of a topic and then a bag of ingredients to work with.

Give this a go, it will be worth it.

Many thanks Mark…....

here is the Ready Steady Cook Theme music to get you on the way…