Grading cooking labs is challenging mostly because you can’t see everything all at the same time, never mind write it down. I see many requests for lab evaluations. Here is what I could find that other teachers around the country use. Some are better than others. There are at least enough ideas to get you started in creating your own lab grading method.
My students love cooking shows (especially the competitive ones) and so do I! With that being said, I wanted to be able to use them in an interactive way, not just with questions that had to be written out and answered. I wanted to be able to engage my students and have some educational fun at the same time. A former student of mine, who just happens to be a computer genius and good friend of my son, designed and gifted me with this computer generated Cooking Show BINGO board game. This Google Sheets program has the capability of creating different board versions at the click of some keys so it saves having to manually recreate and reproduce different boards for your students! How cool is that? Read on to learn more about how you can create these for your classroom use.
What is it about cooking challenges that gets students so excited? In my Career & Consumer Sciences class, my students always want to know if we are going to cook! In order to prepare them for adulthood and living on their own, I do incorporate some survival cooking! I try to teach them basic skills, preparing foods or meals that have a lot of versatility or options! My students love chicken tenders and so this challenge was well received and gave them some different ways of preparing chicken tenders using the same four ingredients. Of course, you don’t have to limit this challenge to one specific class or age group as it would work well with junior high level students too because of it’s simplicity!
Consumption of fruit in the daily diet is important for all age groups! What’s to love about fruit? A lot actually! Fruit is available in many forms from fresh to frozen to canned and even dried. Fruit is a nutrient dense, low calorie food that can be eaten alone as a snack or incorporated into a meal or dessert. Fruits can be eaten raw or cooked and there are so many to choose from, some more seasonal than others! This fruit lesson focuses on the classification of fruits, how to select quality fruits and explores enzymatic browning. It also features delicious galette labs. Galettes are unique to most students and a little different than making pies, but they are easy to make and amazingly delicious especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!
After reading Tisha Richmond’s blog & book titled, “Make Learning Magical”, I wanted to give sketchnotes a try. The problem was, finding a good topic. In addition, I wanted to amp up the excitement to get my students to buy into the concept. Since there are 7 baking ingredients, I decided to call them the “Magnificent 7” because of how well they work together, similar to the characters in the movie of the same name. The first day of sketchnotes was met with mixed reviews….some students grumbled, while others really got into it. Later, some of the students who were a bit skeptical said they actually liked it and found it relaxing! I loved that my students bought into this concept and I have to admit they were fun to grade!
If you visited the site last week, you saw that the plant based protein lesson was focused on beans and legumes. This week is a continuation of plant based proteins, concentrating on seeds!
Tired of creating web-quest style assignments only to find that the website has changed and your web-quest no longer meshes, leaving you to reinvent the wheel? This is partly why I created the MyPlate stations. The information within the stations was created using reliable website sources which I will cite below. Therefore, the content won’t change, unless the information gets updated when the guide gets reviewed every 5 years. Additionally, stations allow students to move around, work at their own pace and use the resulting notes to complete follow-up assignments or activities that reinforce the material. Read on to learn more…
Did you know that January is National Soup Month? Soup is the perfect comfort food for a typically cold, winter month or any other day for that matter! To celebrate this meal which has so much to offer in the way of health benefits, versatility in its types, and cultural ties, I’ve created a Hyper-Slide of activities to help students learn more about soup. Read on to see how you can add a mini soup unit and lab to your repertoire!
Students always want to bake cakes! Maybe it’s because the cakes they get at home are typically prepackaged or out of a mix! Don’t get me wrong…those are great once in awhile and have saved me on more than one occasion, when time was at a premium! However, when talking to students, I get the impression that most only get scratch baked cakes in rare instances or on very special celebratory days! I guess I was lucky growing up because my family baked cakes often, as desserts were a delicious way to end the evening meal! Because of this, I was fortunate to be exposed to a variety of different cakes. The funny thing is that while growing up, I thought there were tons of different types of cakes, but in reality there are only a couple! This lesson focuses on a cake overview of history, types, solving cake problems and includes some labs, focusing on the two basic types of cakes!
On occasion I have shown episodes of Chopped in my classes. My students and I are often amazed at the unusual foods that are selected for the challenges; many students have never heard of. Knowing that these foods piqued my students’ interest, especially junior high, I decided to create an assignment around bizarre mystery foods that could be used as bell ringers, fillers for when class ends early or even as a before holiday or spring break activity to keep students engaged and interested! This assignment not only provides information on curious, bizarre foods, but also helps students navigate the world by showing where in the world these foods originate via Google Maps and helps build confidence during oral presentations as they WOW their peers with unique food curiosities!
