Erica M. Mentone
Joseph Renzuli proposes an educational enrichment triad model, which suggests exposing children (specifically gifted children) to different types of enrichment. This unit will begin with a type one enrichment activity or a general exploratory activity. These type one exploratory activities are meant to expose students to a wide variety of topics that they otherwise would not generally be exposed to. (4) This includes guest speakers and exposure to different careers. I would suggest either bringing in an industrial engineer to speak to the children about his or her job, or bringing in a variety of engineers to speak to the children. Being exposed to real live engineers who are able to answer their questions will make this unit more real for the students, and give them something to aspire to. To connect with an engineer, and for information about teaching young students about engineering as well as partnerships with professional engineering organizations, visit the following website developed by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE): http://www.engineeringk12.org/, or contact your local college or university.
A chart can be started on the first day of this unit to list and develop the student's understanding of what an engineer does. The chart can be headed Our Understanding of Engineers and the students can add to it and change it after each lesson to reflect their understanding of engineering. Including one or two days of general engineering activities will give students a general idea for engineering as a career based in problem solving. These engineering activities can be selected from Janice VanCleave's book, Engineering for Every Kid: Easy Activities that Make Learning Science Fun, (5) or the website http://www.engineeringk12.org/.
This project can be introduced to the students by challenging them to engineer the world's best chocolate chip cookie. The first order of business is creating specifications to identify markers of a quality chocolate chip cookie. In order for students to create the best chocolate chip cookie, they must first determine what makes a quality chocolate chip cookie. In engineering, this is the job of the research and development (R&D) engineers, marketing personnel or others, depending on the company. Setting the quality specifications for chocolate chip cookies can be done in a series of three lessons.
During these first three lessons, the students will lay the foundation for the rest of the unit. In the first lesson, they will create a rubric for assessing chocolate chip cookies. (see lesson 1) A rubric is a set of standards developed for assessment (see example rubric in appendix b). It is beneficial to expose students to rubrics because their school work is often assessed using rubrics. In the second lesson, the students will learn to ask good questions and they will talk to other teachers and students in order to collect data about what other people want in a chocolate chip cookie. This is called gathering the voice of the customer, or customer requirements. Then they will return to their original rubric and revise it to reflect the voice of the customer.
After the students have determined what people want in a cookie, they can begin research and development. Since most engineers do not create anything completely from scratch, the students will be reading and evaluating various existing cookie recipes. The website http://allrecipes.com/ or a similar recipe share website can be used to obtain these recipes. The students will experiment to determine what effect individual ingredients have on the finished product. After conducting these experiments the students will use their findings to guide a discussion about which ingredients in what amounts produce the desired results based on the specifications created earlier in the unit. (see lesson 3)
In the next lesson, after groups of students review and discuss their notes together, they will be able to craft a recipe using the experimental recipes that produced desired results, and their own ideas about the ingredients. After the cookies have been baked, the students will work in their groups to do a blind taste test in order to evaluate each batch of cookies based on the quality specification rubric that they developed as a class.
The winning cookie recipe will be posted on the internet using the site http://allrecipes.com/ or a similar recipe site, and the children can periodically check the ratings and reviews of the product. If time allows, the students can even revise the recipe again based on reviews from the website. After the children decide on the best cookie recipe, they will write a report that includes a write up of the recipe and a narrative explanation of the entire process.
The winning cookie recipe will then be used in the culminating event, a mock corporation/cookie sale. The students will take on different roles in industry. Sales, marketing, quality control and production teams will be put together, and the students will have a cookie sale. Marketing will be responsible for developing posters prior to the cookie sale, soliciting consumer feedback after the cookie sale, and checking the recipe website periodically to check for and read reviews of the recipe. Production will follow the recipe to bake the cookies. Quality control will test samples for quality and consistency using the cookie rubric from the first lesson. The sales team will sell the cookies.