Today I had my Y11 for an internal intensive (rather than a mid-year exam). We've been learning about bacteria and fungi for two weeks now using a mixture of Education Perfect, literacy activities designed by our literacy specialist Marc Milford and class activities.
Today was a bread and yoghurt-making practical that they will have to discuss for their 4-credit write-up next week.
Hopoate and Hala sieving their flour as they begin to make bread.
Each group started off the lesson by making a slightly different type of bread using a variation of a basic recipe. After all the steps were followed and the dough was left to rise (aka the yeast were left alone with the flour to conduct anaerobic respiration) we baked the bread for 25 minutes.
Then we made observations of the appearance of the bread, and also did a taste-test.
Chelsea with the different variations of bread (her wholemeal bread is second from the right).
After we had made bread using yeast we interacted with a different microorganism - bacteria!
Students first heated milk to destroy any pathogenic (harmful) bacteria, and then cooled it to the optimum temperature for our helpful species. Then the bacteria were added and left to do their work for the next five hours. We'll eat the yoghurt tomorrow!
Makaydyn making yoghurt - the live bacteria cultures are in the yellow packet Desiree is holding on the left of the picture, and are about to added now the milk has dropped to the optimum 40 degrees celsius.
The students were great and the lesson went really well. I would definitely do this with a class again - perhaps earlier in the topic, so when we discuss respiration in greater depth they would have something tangible to hook the abstract concept on.
We couldn't have run this lesson without Ms Heka helping us out in her kitchen! Hopefully we left it as we found it Ms Heka! Thanks for hosting us :)
