Review for:Pizza Explorer

posted: on January 9, 2007 at 10:04AM

Biology (applicable from MS through HS)

Cellular Respiration/Fermentation
(relevant to Nutrition/Organic Chemistry too)

To make the abstract chemistry of cellular respiration and fermentation REAL AND RELEVANT to their lives.

A.P., Honors or Advanced, Intro or Regular, Remedial

I use it with my AP Biology students during our "Feast of Fermentation" where my students gather in my home (I have a multiple user airport in my home). We make sour-dough pizza, eat kim-chee, homemade cheese, yougurt-based chip dips, and drink homemade soda. While our pizza dough is rising, students break into groups and become "experts" on one (or more) components of pizza (onions, peppers, olives, dough, meat, cheese, mushrooms, and tomatoes). Students explore the nutritional compositiion, food processing, food chemistry, and "hot topics" of their pizza component and share their expertise with others during our feasting of the pizza!

Provides visualization or animation, Increases mapping skills, Provides a virtual lab, Increases access to scientists, Provides practice or tutorial, Provides additional content, Provides assessment opportunity, Increases student engagement and motivation, fosters cooperative and collaborative learning given the proper task structure

A fun resource that facilitates a team building activity for the class. (I teach in a private school close to my home, so I do this in my home now. When I taught in a public school further away from home, I swapped classrooms with the Family & Consumer Science teacher (?Home Ec.) and I used her kitchen classroom. This was a wonderful way to bring in the administration, teachers with prep. periods, and custiodial/maintenance/support staff to join the kids in eating and learning togeter. The students were teachers here!!)
Quizzes are a part of the Pizza Explorer so teachers can walk around to record student scores. Students can retake quizzes to demonstrate mastery of material.
This activity also features a right-brained/left-brained format! Very fun for students to use in both formats to identify their personal learning style preference.

There is a great deal of wonderful information here!! Don't ask students to try and wrestle with all of it!! Provide a deatailed task structure to guide their work to help them distinguish what is/not important according to your learning goals.

updated: on January 9, 2007 at 10:07AM