TITLE OF LESSON Cooking Workshop (Pumpkin Muffins)

CONTEXT OF LESSON
It is Thanksgiving themed and Thanksgiving is in two weeks. We will be measuring using
numbers one through ten which is what students have been working on. They are learning how
books provide information, so I want to expand on that by showing how a different printed
material (recipe) provides information. Students learn best through hands on activities which is
why this activity is appropriate for the class.

OBJECTIVES AND ASSESSMENT

Developmental Objectives
1. The students will be able to follow
a recipe.

2. The students will be able to explain

how this type of printed material
provides information.

Assessment
I will observe students following the recipe as they take turns
adding ingredients in the appropriate amount to the mixing
bowl. I will ask the students which ingredient to add next to be
able to assess if the students can follow the recipe in order. . I
will record this information on the attached data collection
instrument.
.I will ask the following questions to the students after the
lesson :
What is a recipe?
What is the difference between a book and a recipe?
What type of information does a recipe provide?
How do you read a recipe? Is it the same as a book?
Why is it important to follow a recipe in order?
I will record this information on the attached data collection
instrument.

RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING (K & 1) OR FOUNDATION BLOCKS

(Preschool)
English (Reading) K.6bexplain printed materials provide information

MATERIALS NEEDED
I will be responsible for the following materials: recipe, flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, salt,
sugar, pure pumpkin, eggs, vegetable oil, orange juice, measuring cups (1 cup, cup, cup),
measuring spoons (1/2 Tablespoon, 1 teaspoon, teaspoon, teaspoon), table cloth, liners,
muffin trays, marker, mixing spoon, mixing bowl, wet wipes, instruction cards, napkins, recipe
cards for each student, plastic spoons, can opener, hand sanitizer.
Emily will supply name tags, Courtney will supply the camera.

PROCEDURE

Preparation of learning environment- Place table cloth over table, instruction card
out, ingredients in containers separated for each group, recipe out to see.
Engagement and introduction of the lesson- Have you guys been learning about
pumpkins? What are some different things youve learned you can do with
pumpkins? Did you know you can make muffins using pumpkins? Today we are
going to be making pumpkin muffins!
Implementation of the lesson-. Whats a recipe?.A recipe is a step by step
instruction guide that tells us how to make something to eat or drink. This is our
recipe for pumpkin muffins. (Explain that a recipe must be followed in order. Go
through each ingredient and hold up the measuring tool used for that ingredient..)
Make kids roll sleeves up. Now give each student an ingredient to add to the mixing
bowl. Ask them to find the measuring tool they will be using. After all of the
ingredients have been added, the students will take turns mixing.
Closure- While the students are mixing, I will ask the questions stated in the
assessment from the third developmental objective. . The students will take turns
filling the liners with the pumpkin mixture. Explain to the students I will put them
in the oven to bake and then this afternoon I will bring them back to eat. If time
permits, students will fill in the missing measurement numbers next to each
ingredient so they will have a recipe card to take home. .
Clean-up- Wet wipes readily available for quick clean up of wiping hands and
wiping down table cloth. Have separate mixing bowls that I can use for each group
so I dont have to clean out mixing bowl each time.

DIFFERENTIATION
I will bring gloves if a student does not like to get their hands messy. When explaining
the new vocabulary in the recipe I will show the measuring tools at the same time to help
pair visual and auditory examples together to meet more students learning styles. I will
bring in a liquid measuring cup for students to use who have less hand coordination and
need a bigger measuring tool to prevent less spilling. The assessment questions in the
third developmental objective are varied in the level of thinking required. After
observing the students throughout the lesson, I will ask each student the appropriate level
question based on my assessment of their ability.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Im worried the lesson may run over time so I need to monitor time and possibly take
out some questions at the beginning of the lesson. I will save filling out the recipe cards
for the end of the lesson in the event that we run out of time and I will omit this from
the lesson. I will then fill out the cards myself and hand them out to the students later
in the day. Students may not like getting messy, so I will bring gloves.

DATA Collection Sheet

Names

Follow the Recipe (Y/N)

Explain what is a recipe

(Y/N)

Additional Comments
(Y/N)

Alex A.
Leah B.
Natalie
Everleigh
Alex D.
Kaylee
Owyn
Drake
Carter
Kathryn
Cory
Jacob
Ayden
Emma Rose
Jonas
Eva
Eleanor
Philip
Averleigh
Leah W.

Pumpkin Recipe

Add the following ingredients to the medium

mixing bowl

1 cups of flour
tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie
spice

1 teaspoon of baking soda

teaspoon of salt

Add the following ingredients to a larger mixing

bowl:

1 cups of sugar

can of Libbys Pure Pumpkin

2 eggs

cup of vegetable oil

cup of orange juice

Mix

Add medium mixing bowl to large mixing bowl

Stir

Fill muffin tins

Bake for 25-30 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees

Workshop Reflection
A. I really wanted to create a cooking lesson that was as authentic as possible, and allow the
students to do almost all of the work. With this goal in mind, I knew I would be struggling to
finish the activity in 15 minutes so I had planned to only focus on one SOL, dropped the other
two I was thinking about incorporating, and I planned for the students to fill out the recipe cards
at the end and not make that an objective so that if we did not get to them I could fill them out
later and bring them back. This way the students still had the recipe card to take home. During
the lesson, I had planned for me to put in the pure pumpkin out of the can because I did not
want the students cutting their hands on the opened can. I was going to have the students put
in the rest of the ingredients. In the first group, the kids seemed very excited and confident that
they could crack an egg so I allowed one student to crack an egg for the recipe. The egg went all
over the table and there was no saving it for the recipe. I was prepared with extra eggs and
paper towels to clean up the mess quickly and from then on I cracked all of the eggs for the
recipe to make sure we didnt lose anymore eggs and had enough to make the recipe for all four
groups. I also had planned for the group to pass around the bowl and have each student fill a
couple muffin tins and then pass it on for a more controlled environment. With the time limit
and trying to engage everyone during the whole activity, I gave each student a spoon, put the
bowl and tins in the middle of the table and had the students all filling muffin tins at the same
time. It was still very much a controlled environment and kept the students engaged until the
very end of the lesson.
B. Evaluating if the students could follow a recipe was very easy to note, and most of the students
really seemed to understand this concept. After each step I asked the group, Okay we just
added
to our recipe, what are we going to do next? And everytime they were able to give
me the answer by pointing to the step. Some students would get confused and point to the
wrong direction when asked individually, but I think they were just getting ahead of themselves.

But some followed the directions so well that they caught me when I accidentally skipped a
step. I somehow skipped right over the baking soda step and Emma Rose let me know I missed
that step and tried to do it. Sometimes when I noticed some students starting to get distracted
and not focused, I would ask them a specific question. Alex A. was starting to lose focus so I
said, Alex I need a measuring cup with a one a line and then a four on it. Alex scans the table
and immediately held up the cup saying, Ive got four and a one on my cup!
Evaluating if each student could explain what a recipe was, was a little tougher to evaluate. I
had plenty of questions to ask the students about the purpose of a recipe, but the students
really only seemed to be able to answer the surface level question of what a recipe was. Natalie
said, A recipe is where you make food! That was about the extent of what most students
answered, however some kids did grasp the importance of following a recipe in order. Eva says
to me, It wont taste right if you dont follow the recipe in order! And Jonas explained where
we can find recipes. He said, Find it in a book! referring to a recipe book like his mom has in
his kitchen at home. A better way to make sure I know each student understands what a recipe
is would be to have them do a journal on what is a recipe and have them draw a picture after.
This step would be done after the workshop and these questions we talked about earlier were
discussed as we did in our lesson.
C. To incorporate developmentally appropriate practice in a better way I would have more
advanced students tell me what measuring tool I needed instead of me telling the students what
cup they needed to get. I had questions that were differentiated already with the level of
thinking required, but I would plan to have more time for a more in depth conversation with
higher level thinkers to really get them to think and answer the more elevated questions I had
planned.
D. I really want all students to grasp the importance of following a recipe in order and the purpose
of a recipe, as well as the difference between a recipe and a book or other printed materials.
Some follow up activities I would do might be an activity where we make paper origami. I will
hand out the instructions and we will first do the activity not following the instructions in order
and just jump around to whichever one we feel like. The students will see that in the end we
dont end up with the object we were trying to create. We will then go back and follow the
directions in order and at the end relate it back to our cooking workshop and how we had to
follow the recipe in order. Another follow-up experience we might do is during a read aloud
compare a recipe book to a story book. We will see differences and similarities. After, as a class
we will vote on some of our favorite recipes and over the next few weeks each student will help
put together a class recipe book they can all have to take home. Hopefully the process of the
production of a book will also help students to understand printed materials better.
E1. Every child is different! I have been told this and I have believed it, but being able to do this
workshop on my own with a group of students I really saw the importance of equity over
equality. Some students needed that extra ingredient to add or that extra measuring cup to find
in order to keep them engaged and learning the whole time. Other students need to be leaders
and it is important that we as teachers embrace our students leading each other at times. Every
child is at a different zone of proximal development so in order for us as teachers to make sure
each child is getting the most out of the lesson we need to provide different leader positions for

students to fufill in each lesson, as well as provide the appropriate scaffolding for each student.
Allow some students to find the measuring cup needed on their own, and allow some students
to pick between two measuring cups to decide which one is needed.
E2. As a teacher, planning is a huge part of our job. We can plan our lesson plan down to every last
detail, but no matter how much we plan and how well we know our lesson in our head, when
we are conducting the activity it is not going to go exactly how we have it scripted in our heads.
Kids are funny that way. Therefore it is important that we have thought about things that might
go wrong in the lesson, and that we are flexible and can change things on the fly during our
lesson to make the most of it. Taking this knowledge into future opportunities to develop
learning experiences for children, I really want to spend more time brainstorming on the part of
each lesson about what could go wrong. I think it is one of the most important parts of the
lesson plan. I also want to think of multiple ways the lesson could be conducted, that way when
I am teaching the lesson, depending on how the students are doing, the lesson could go in a few
different directions in order to best meet what the children need that day and what theyre
ready for. This could also be a good way to incorporate differentiation. Because the class could
break up into smaller groups and then I could teach the same lesson a few different ways to
different groups so that each child is getting what they need while still grasping the concepts
from the lesson.
E3. I have always needed to plan everything out that I am going to say and do for every
presentation I have done in my schooling so far. So I was nervous about my lesson not going as
planned and not knowing what to do if things went wrong during the workshop. However,
there were a few things I hadnt planned for and switched up during the lesson and it ran very
smoothly! I was very surprised by myself and also proud at the same time! Knowing that I have
the capability of improvising and changing things up on the fly really gave me a lot of confidence
in my teaching abilities. I know more practice and experience doing lessons like these will help
to better hone these important teaching skills, but knowing that I am able to do it was a very
rewarding feeling I got from doing this workshop.

SET UP PICTURES