Mrs C Tilt, Fairtrade Coordinator, visited Churchfields Primary School on Friday 14th March to work with Year 4 on Fairtrade. The two Year 4 classes and their teachers gathered in the Creative Learning Area for an interactive learning session about Fairtrade with a particular focus on chocolate.

After looking at the Fairtrade logo, Mrs Tilt explained what Fairtrade means to farmers and their families in developing countries that grow many of our popular foods such as chocolate, bananas, oranges, tea, coffee and sugar. The children learnt about the steps involved in making chocolate; from the cocoa trees, to harvesting the pods, drying and weighing the cocoa beans and taking them to the factory to be made into chocolate. The children enjoyed finding Ghana on the large inflatable globe.

The second part of the session concentrated on what life is like for families and especially children in Ghana. Mrs Tilt showed slides of her visit to Ghana and had brought along a large collection of African artefacts for the children to handle and try out. These included a sleeping mat, cooking pots, calabashes, fans, woven mats, brooms and a special bag made from recycled tyres for collecting water from a well. The star attraction was the type of machete used for splitting open the cocoa pods (and handled with extreme care).

There were also several African clothes and textiles which staff and pupils had fun modelling. At the end of the session the children had lots of interesting questions to ask. The Year 4 children will be doing some follow up work on Fairtrade over the next two weeks.

Mrs C Tilt

Fairtrade Coordinator