"How chocolate is made" Team games, educational visits and chocolate: to become informed consumers
4th grade, primary school
Interdisciplinary activities
Duration: 4 x 45’
Number of students: c. 20-25
Overview
This lesson plan aims to make students pay more attention to what they eat: to think about the ingredients, how to understand them, and how they are processed to create industrial food products.
Chocolate is the focus of this lesson plan; similar learning goals could also be achieved by using different foods, adapting the educational resources available here in an appropriate way.
In the first part, students learn to read the labels and packaging of chocolate-based foods, with an emphasis on identifying the various ingredients. During this phase, they will be asked to bring to school the labels from chocolate-based products they often consume at home. They will take part in a team quiz, and will be able to discuss what they have learned by looking carefully at food labels. They will be given homework on this theme, with the aim of transferring the skills they have learned into their daily routines, involving their family members as well.
In the second phase, students will learn about the production process of chocolate, with reference also to its history: when it was first discovered, who consumed it in previous centuries, and the equipment used to produce it in both the past and the present.
Students who take part in educational trips to the Antica Norba Chocolate Museum will receive this information at the museum; their learning is supported by the various exhibits on display.
There is a presentation available in Appendix A, which can be used by teachers to convey this type of information.
At the end of this section, students can participate in a quiz, organised into two groups.
Downloads
Lesson plan
Presentation
Appendix A – The story of a chocolate PDF – PPTX
Activity
Appendix B1 – Guess what? The ingredients of chocolate products DOCX – PDF
Quiz
Appendix B2 – What do you know about chocolate? PDF – PPTX
References
Appendix C – Pictures from Museo del Cioccolato used in these Educational Resources PDF – PPTX
Appendix D – Content from Europeana PDF – PPTX
Scoreboard
Appendix E – Scoreboard XLSX – ODS
Package
All files in a single package ZIP
Europeana Food and Drink
Open Educational Resources supporting the lesson plan “How chocolate is made“ are created by Museo del Cioccolato “Antica Norba” di Norma (Latina, Italy) and DigiLab, Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca e Servizi (Sapienza University in Rome).
Europeana Food and Drink
This initiative is part of the Europeana Food and Drink project, cofunded by the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme, part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
These Open Educational Resources demonstrate that the connection between cultural heritage and the food and drink sector can create a great value in education.