Chemistry in Cooking Lessons
Lesson Plans: 5th Grade Chemistry in Cooking Lesson Overview
5th Grade Chemistry in Cooking Lesson Plans.docxLesson One: STEM Story about Cooking
In this lesson, students will learn how cooking is an everyday example of STEM. To do this, students will read a STEM story or watch a STEM story video. Students will then write their own cooking STEM stories by interviewing a person from their community about a food dish they enjoy(ed) cooking or eating.
Lesson Plan
Linked Resources
Interview Tips Presentation.pdfLesson Two: Physical Change vs Chemical Reaction in Baking a Meringue Cookie
This lesson reinforces the idea that STEM is everywhere by showing students that baking is an example of STEM. Through a baking demonstration, the students will learn to determine whether a chemical reaction has occurred (a new substance was formed) or whether the change was a physical change (no new substance was formed).
Lesson Plan
Lesson Three: Physical Change vs Chemical Reaction in our Community Recipes
This lesson is a multi-day lesson that serves as a second practice for students to determine whether a chemical reaction has occurred (a new substance was formed) or whether the change was a physical change (no new substance was formed). Students will bring back the recipes they have collected from their STEM story interviews. Working in pairs or trios, students will share their stem story, review each recipe, and identify where physical changes and chemical reactions have occurred. Then they will work together to create illustrated pages of their recipes and a classroom recipe book.
Lesson Plan
Lesson Four: Using Acid and Bases to Improve our Cooking
This lesson will dive deeper into chemical change by asking students to think through a cooking challenge: how to make fluffier pancakes. Students will experiment with acids and bases to create chemical reactions that add more “air” to the pancakes. Through observation of the properties of these reactions, students will work together to figure out which materials would be good for detecting acids.
Lesson Plan
Lesson Five: Using Chemical Reactions during Cleaning to Understand Matter
This lesson continues the theme of cooking and STEM. It starts by using kitchen cleaning TikTok as a vehicle for introducing the idea that matter is made of particles too small to be seen. Then students will work on the penny lab to figure out where the oxidation on the penny went after dipping it in a cleaning solution.