We began this lesson by activating our prior knowledge about plant parts and the function of each. We then focused in on the roots of the plants – sharing what we remembered about roots and reading one of our books about roots to extend upon that knowledge.
- “Roots” by Charlotte Guillain
- “Roots” by Lynn Stone (AR 2.3)
- Take in water with nutrients from the soil
- Store the water and nutrients
- Provide structure for the plants
Then we discussed what the purpose of the roots can be for humans… to eat!
We viewed images of some of the root vegetables we like to eat to see how many students could identify them…
We then focused on the shape of these root vegetables.
For older students, I introduced them to the types of taproots:
- Conical root – widest at the top, tapering steadily toward the bottom (parsnip)
- Fusiform root – widest in the middle, tapers toward the top and bottom (radish)
- Napiform root – widest at the top, tapers suddenly like a tail at the bottom (turnip)
But for most students, we used our geometry terms to describe the shapes:
- Triangle – 3 sided figure
- Right triangle – a right angle
- Isosceles triangle – 2 side of the same length
- Equilateral triangle – all equal sides
- Quadrilaterals – 4 sided figure
- Rhombus – equal sides
- Rectangle – 4 right angles
- Square – 4 right angles with equal sides
When it was time for students to create the shapes on their journal pages, younger students traced guides that I had created, while older kids used colored paper to cut out the shapes. For an extra challenge, students could fold the paper in half and try to draw half of the symmetrical shape for it to be opened to the full shape.
After students had created the shapes in their journal, they labeled them with the name of the vegetable. They also colored the shapes the appropriate colors for the vegetables and added the leaves on top. To finish their project, they wrote the shape name of each vegetable.
I recently sat amongst some of the luckiest students in the world in a kitchen class at the Edible Schoolyard Berkeley.
The day I attended, eighth grade students were working on a unit about corn. Walking around the classroom, it was evident that students’ experiences with corn would connect to what they were learning in their classes, covering topics from the civilization of the Americas…
As students entered the classroom, the washed their hands, put on an apron, and had a seat at the central table to listen to instructions. They were told that throughout that class period, they would be processing corn from it’s dried state all the way to cooking their own corn tortilla (that, of course, they’d get to taste at the end). Students were then divided into their three groups to get started.
When students arrived at Mr. Nick’s table, they were introduced to the types of corn. They were invited to touch and taste the different kinds.
- Sweet Corn – enjoyed as a vegetable rather than being left to dry and consumed as a grain; picked when immature; always has an even number of rows on the ears
- Dent Corn – eaten as a grain, rather than a vegetable; higher in starch and lower in sugar than sweet corn; has a dent (or dimple) that forms in the top of each kernel as it begins to dry out; also known as field corn; used for animal feed, making corn syrup, fuel, or biodegradable plastics.
- Popcorn – grains with a hard, moisture-resistant hull surrounding a dense pocket of starch that will pop when subjected to heat because steam builds up inside the hull; cultivated as a special variety
At Ms. Cook’s table, students learned about nixtamalization – the process of cooking dried corn in an alkali solution (lime-water, the mineral not the fruit!) which adds calcium and make B vitamins and amino acids more bioavailable. The final product is tender and sweet and often called “nixtamal.”
But with a little cooking classroom magic, some completed “nixtamal” magically appeared so the students wouldn’t have to wait until the next day to continue to the next step in creating their corn tortillas.
Their next step was exploring methods for grinding the nixtamal to turn into their dough for the tortillas.
This lesson was a perfect example of demonstrating how familiar foods are processed from being grown on the farm to being presented at the table (with a strong historical context as well).