What shape will your pastry be?
5
Product evaluation
Product evaluation provides an extremely powerful way of engaging children with the design decisions that have made a product what it is.
The first step is to investigate a product to find out what it is like. Note this is not the same as finding out if the children like the product being investigated. In food technology this involves sensory analysis:
- what does the product look like?
- what does the product smell like?
- what does the product taste like?
With many products it is important to carry out this analysis on separate parts, the pastry wrapping and the filling, for example, as well as the whole product.
The activity should be organised as an exercise in co-operative learning, with children working in groups discussing their findings and deciding on an agreed description of the sensory properties.
It is often easier for a small group to carry out this activity as a comparison between two or more products. The findings can be presented in terms of: this pastry was the most crumbly; this one the least crumbly; with this one in the middle.
You will need to provide pupils with a vocabulary for describing sensory qualities and show them how to match words to sensation.
Having worked hard to get agreed descriptions, it is important to ask these follow up questions.
- Why do you think the food technologist designed it to be like that?
- What would you change about it if you could?
- How might you make these changes?