Grade 2
Unit 3: Mix It Up!
essential question: What can food do?
Project Description: Students learn about materials and their properties through exploring food. They explore the cultures that food comes from and develop understanding around their food preferences. Students investigate what happens when you prepare, cook, mix, heat and cool foods as well as how to describe properties of matter and how they change. Throughout the project, students document what they eat in a food journal and work on making healthy food choices. They learn about the five food groups and research how food helps our bodies.
Students Mix It Up! by using the Design Thinking Process to create new dishes. They submit a final recipe for a class cookbook to share with others. Their recipes showcase their knowledge of the benefits of food and their understanding of properties. Students work as changemakers to bring awareness to a food issue the class cares about in their class cookbook.
next generation science standards
Performance Expectations
2-PS1-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties. [Clarification Statement: Observations could include color, texture, hardness, and flexibility. Patterns could include the similar properties that different materials share.]
2-PS1-2. Analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of properties could include, strength, flexibility, hardness, texture, and absorbency.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of quantitative measurements is limited to length.]
2-PS1-4. Construct an argument with evidence that some changes caused by heating or cooling can be reversed and some cannot. [Clarification Statement: Examples of reversible changes could include materials such as water and butter at different temperatures. Examples of irreversible changes could include cooking an egg, freezing a plant leaf, and heating paper.]
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Written by: Lacy Szuwalski and Zoë Randall