PIZZA

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Room 14 has taken on the huge project of researching, designing, building and using a wood fired pizza oven. We are the year 5 class who are part of the 'Garden to Table' programme. We are focusing on making a resource that will allow us to cook food in school using an environmentally friendly power source...wood!

We are currently carrying out an inquiry project about pizza ovens and how to make them. As part of this learning we are finding examples of ovens and the instructions to makes them, making links with our wider school community for assistance and donations and we are also working on our independent inquiry skills. We are going to have to compare many pizza ovens to find the best model for our target audience.

In topic work this term, we have been learning about effective business practice and how to come up with a successful product. Our class are making the oven itself the product in our business process. We are looking at the most effective ways to produce this product with limited funding, limited prior knowledge and limited resources. Miss Bryant has just won a $1000 grant to put toward the construction of the pizza oven from **Unisys.** The money needs to be spent by October therefore planning and the initial stages of our 'business process' are underway. We hope to be eating pizza by the end of Term 3 (if not before then).

Click the following link to read our successful **Unisys Grant** application form: Room 14 went on a trip to Archie's Pizzeria in New Market to learn how to make proper pizza. The tripwas awesome and we all have lots of fun and lots of food! We were greeted with drinks (coffee's for the adults and juice forall the kids) and then were shown the tricks of the trade. They showed us how to make pizza dough in bulk and then we were given a lesson on opening out the dough (opening the door) and even shown a dough toss. We then got given a ball of dough to use for our own pizza. We madethe base and dressed the pizza with our favourite toppings and then got to put it in the woodfired pizza oven. After watching our own pizza cook we sat down to eat together. They tasted fantastic!!! After the eating we got to ask Archie some questions about how the oven works and how it was made - this will really help us when it comes time to make our own oven. Archie also surprised us with chocolate brownie and lollypops for dessert! It was the best trip most of us have ever been on and we are hoping our pizza's will taste as good as Archie's do!!! We have also been doing some artwork to go along with our pizza oven venture. We recycled the stationary boxes and used paper collage to decorate the top of our box with a pizza logo. The turned out really well and later in the year we might serve our pizza in them to our families!

Room 14 at Meadowbank School built a woodfired pizza oven as part of the Garden to Table project (based on Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden project that is running in Australia). We built this to create an alternative cooking source in our school grounds. It also uses a sustainable fuel (wood) and we have now planted Kanuka and Manuka seedlings to start a cycle of sustainability. We use the vegetables that we plant in our sustainable seed garden as pizza toppings and this ensures us that we are eating organic, fresh vegetables that we have had the satisfaction of growing ourselves. The oven was built by the students of Room 14 with the help of myself and our two caretakers (who we could not have done this project without). The children layed the foundations and then built the brick base up ensuring the layers were level. A huge amount of learning took place during the process and they increase their vocabulary also. When the base was a hollow pit the kids bought in wine bottles and filled the cavity - we also layed a time capsule. The dome was made up using a layered approach; sand dome, fire bricks, fire blanket or green bats for insulation, chicken wire and then 2 layers of plaster. We also are creating a huge mosaic for the front of the oven. Kids were involved in every part of the process with about 2000 photos to prove it! We then had our first cooking day where we set up tables in our hall. We all made the dough and while it was rising we split into 3 groups. Each group made a different part of the meal including three large green salads (produce from our garden) and different dressings to compliment, chocolate caramel bananas which were cooked on the embers and home made lemonade. They then dressed the pizzas and cooked then using the oven. We all sat down at set tables and ate our feast together! Quotes included 'It was the best day of my life' We then had the family night which you attended and it was a time to celebrate our success with family and the senior management team. I am very proud of my class and both the school and the wider community are very enthusiastic about the oven. We are again cooking using the oven this term and the class want to hire it our to families so that the school can make money from it. We hope to have this up and working soon!

**__Quotes from Kids!__**
 * "We made the pizza oven so that we had a good use for the vegetables grown in our sustainable seed garden" - Nadia**
 * "The best part of the experiences was smoothing the plaster level on the dome. It meant it was finished" - Tom K**
 * "I learnt what insulation was and it was cool that we learnt heaps of stuff to teach our parents" - Lauren**
 * "We learnt how to make pesto using herbs from our garden. We then used this on our pizza bread - it was yum!" - Maddie**
 * "I learnt what the foundations did and why they were important. Without them the pizza oven would sink into the ground" - Dylan**
 * "It was cool learning how to make salt dough bricks for our model ovens. This showed us how we would make the real thing" - George**
 * "The class worked together as a team to get the pizza oven finished and we learnt lots of skills and values throughout the project" - Charlotte **

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When we made the pizza oven we had to use sand and put it in a dome shape to keep the shape of the pizza oven .Than we put the fire bricks around the sand, then we put on a fire blanket to keep the hot air in. We had to put on some chicken wire so the plaster could stick. On Wednesday we cooked in our pizza oven we had to make the dough from scratch then we put our toppings on, on one we put on potatoes another we put on onions’ also olives. My favourite was the one with potatoes. -Lauren

We made the pizza oven in term 3 so by now we are cooking experts. We used alot of different materials for our oven like, bricks,fire blanket, chicken wire and plaster. On our last cooking day we made a caesar salad, an orzo salad and apple crumble. Today we made pizza, a green salad and baked apples. For some we didn't put any cheese on because Ryan (a boy in our class) is allergic to dairy. My favourite pizza was the one with potatoes though some didn't aggree with me. I think Maddie's favourite pizza was onion!​ - Erin

From start to finish it was a prety hard process. First we had to do ALOTof research to understand what we were going to do and then get all the materials we were going to need. the making process probabbaly took about three weeks. once we had finished we had a day where we cooked in the pizza oven and ate from it. when we ate we all sat on tables and ate together. The pizza was really nice and I had seven pieces.I think the best part was making it but the worst part was researching. the esiest part was eating and the hardest was researching. Dane  The pizza oven project in term 3 was a wonderful project for us. Room 14 did a lot of hardwork research and it took us a long time. Rod (my dad) supplied the concrete. We made the base by building up the bricks so that we had a wood storage area and the space to make the pizza oven.After that we made a time captual so that if it gets bashed down in years to come people will find it we also filled the base with sand and wine & beer bottles. We then put a steel grid in then the concrete then left it to dry. Then we did the sand dome with sand supplied by my dad. After that we built the bricks into a dome the put our Insulation, Chickenwire on then our plaster in a darkish colour and a lightish colour. Our class is a kitchen garden class so we get to cook every wednesday. This was a really enjoyable project so I hope we have inspired you to make your own pizza oven. Charlotte  The pizza oven has been a very hard project to do.From making to cook to eating there have been the easiest and the hardest.Firstly we made a base to stop the pizza oven from gradually sinking into the ground overtimethen we stacked layer upon layer of bricksto make a platform kinda thing for the pizza oven.Secondly we made a sand dome and we stacked layers of fire bricks around it.After we put the insulation and chicken wire on it we piled on plaster which(just to make it look nice)was in a darkish colour and a lightish colour.When we tried our first cooking day we thought it was great!So now we are cooking once every fortnight.After all this we now know what was once a dream is now reality! 