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Chocolate money

Chocolate money

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 Resource from the ENGAGE project, which won 'best open educational resource (2017)'

 

Europeans love chocolate - we eat over half the world's supply! The bad news is that we are eating more cocoa than can be produced and soon chocolate may become a rare and precious commodity as farmers struggle to meet demand. In this activity students apply their knowledge of pollination to discuss why cocoa yields on a plantation are decreasing. They then find out who funds scientific research by taking roles in a funding meeting - can they work out a deal where all parties will benefit?

    Blueprint curriculum link

    • Unit: Interdependence
    • Concept: Abiotic & biotic: Abiotic and biotic factors affect the population of an organism
    • Skills: Speak: Present
    • Learning stage: Analyse
    Weblinks

    The cocoa crisis

    News story on why chocolate supplies are running low.

    Cocoa pollination research project

    Background reading for teachers. The real research project that the one in the activity was based on.

    Chocolate in the Ivory Coast

    You can use this video to show the students how cocoa is harvested. The section 3:02-3:44 is suitable. If you have time, your students may enjoy watching the rest of the video which shows cocoa farmers tasting chocolate for the first time.

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    Q&A

    For the Year 7 Mastery Practice book:

    For the Y9/GCSE Mastery Practice Book:

    It was written to help year 7 students learn to transfer the scientific knowledge to unfamiliar situation. It can also be used by students in other years to improve their understanding of the fundamental concepts. Learning to apply is what will give students access to the 60% of marks at GCSE that demand more than recalling content. The book uses a research-based approach to teach students how to solve different types of problems.

    The Practice Book has a chapter on each unit in the year 7 curriculum, based on a 5-year curriculum and AQA's KS3 Science Syllabus. Download the sample material to see exactly what concepts and types of problems are included.

    The first strategy studente need to learn is to evaluate the problem and what knowledge is needed to solve it. 'Detect' simulates how an expert looks at a question. They make sense of the situation, look beyond the superficial details to find the deep structure This allows them to recognise this as an example of a problem type they have seen before, and recall the organised information they need to solve - key concepts. It ensures that students avoid their inclination to just look at the keywords, and dive in risking misunderstanding the situation. Detect is broken down into smaller steps, usually: draw a diagram, show values, identify unknown, decide the concept

    This encourages students to bring into their working memory all their existing knowledge, externalise it on paper (to reduce working memory demands), and then home in on what's relevant to solving the problem.

    The third stage of the problem solving strategy is the actual solution process using the knowledge from Recall.The Solve starts by showing how to use the knowledge from Recall and models a step by step process of moving towards a solution for the problem.We teach students how to write answers scientifically, using a variety of structures like claim-evidence-reasoning, and problem-solution, and cause-effect.

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    Customer Reviews

    Based on 4 reviews
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    A
    Alison Michael
    Ideal at the end of topic on reproduction

    My class were intrigued by this activity, they enjoyed the opportunity to take on different roles and worked well in different groups throughout the lesson. It fitted in well with our topic, was a nice activity to do at the end of term while introducing important ethical and commercial considerations.

    R
    Renrut
    Ideal at the end of topic on reproduction

    My class were intrigued by this activity, they enjoyed the opportunity to take on different roles and worked well in different groups throughout the lesson. It fitted in well with our topic, was a nice activity to do at the end of term while introducing important ethical and commercial considerations.

    r
    renrut
    Ideal at the end of topic on reproduction

    My class were intrigued by this activity, they enjoyed the opportunity to take on different roles and worked well in different groups throughout the lesson. It fitted in well with our topic, was a nice activity to do at the end of term while introducing important ethical and commercial considerations.

    J
    Jude S
    Chocolate money in Uruguay

    I recently used these materials with teacher trainers and advisors in Uruguay with interesting results (nb I used the Spanish versions of the materials). It was great to see the teachers in the role of students. They were highly engaged and loved taking part in the debate - which was very well structured. The teachers came up with the same types of questions that students have when I've used this in school which was interesting and the supporting materials were excellent and provided the right type of prompts.

    However it did raise some interesting cultural differences, although the words fundraiser and funder had the same translation in Spanish they had different meanings culturally - they could not understand what the role of the fundraisers was and on whose 'side' they would be. The debate became an interesting farmers vs Monsanto role play.