©foodforum.org.uk 2000
All rights reserved


About this section  | 

Designing Activities

The following materials are teaching and learning materials that support the KS3 National Strategy and the D&T Framework. They support teaching and learning in the important sub-skills of designing. They may be used with students for whole class teaching sessions (if you have a white board and projection facility, or an interactive whiteboard). Alternatively, looking at these resources and considering how they may be used, might prompt you to develop your own along similar lines.

To open and download the files, simply click on the titles in the left hand column of the table below:

Title What you can use it for
Designing strategies For whole class teaching or for students to use. Provides ideas for focused practical tasks or starters that help in the teaching of designing skills and product development in food contexts.
Designing from images For whole class teaching or for students to use. Provides stimulus images to help in the teaching of designing skills and product development in food contexts.
Think about ... These images may be printed out on cards and used as a visual prompt for students when designing with specific criteria in mind, egs colour, shape, size, texture. They have been successfully used at KS2 and KS3 in conjunction with the Designing with bread activity worksheets below.

Designing with bread

These activity worksheets provide a framework for students when designing bread products modelling flavour, colour, shape and texture. They have been used effectively at KS2 and KS3 and support the National Strategy (Primary and Secondary).

Designing with fruits

These materials may be used to help students to develop ideas around a specific brief. They help students to understand what a specification is and give them experience of using one.They have been used successfully at KS2 as well as KS3 and support the literacy and numeracy strands of the Primary Strategy.
Designing salads These materials work along the lines of the Designing with Fruits activity above, but this time focusing on salad ingredients.

Designing users in

These images may be printed out on cards and used as a visual prompt for students when designing with specific users in mind - NB take care when using images that students do not view individuals in stereotypical ways and challenge any such assumptions where they do arise.

Matching ingredients

A quick starter activity or focused task to help students to match ingredients to different rice dishes. This encourages them to anlayse and interpret information on food labels and apply analytical thinking skills.

Speaking and listening

Suggestions for speaking and listening activities whihc build on the Primary Strategy materials within the context of food.

Sensory descriptors

A list of sensory descriptors for use in sensory evaluation work - helps students to build a sensory vocabulary.

Attribute analysis

Excel spreadsheet template for recording and analysing sensory evaluaton - may be used with individual students or on a whiteboard as a class exercise - supports skills of analysis, evaluation and data handling.

Odd one out

A quick starter activity or focused task to encourage analytical thinking and reasoning.
Compare and contrast Use these pairs of products as a basis for product analysis and evaluation. Helps students to develop analytical, evaluative and reasoning skills.

PMI - Plus, Minus, Interesting

Example of a completed PMI

Evaluate the plus, minus and itneresting points of a product. Then consider how the minus points could be developed into plus points.
Inspirations Get students to use these images as inspiration for designing food products.
Morphology

Students are given examples of products that have been developed by 'morphing' one product, eg a biscuit, into another product type such as a muffin. Give each group of 3 or 4 students one of the sheets and ask them to evaluate the example of morphology. Evaluation criteria are given. Then on the last sheet ask them to develop, make and evaluate a morphed product of their own. They will need to refer to recipe books for biscuit recipes.

Fit 4 Purpose pics

Fit 4 Purpose cards

A designing activity that helps students to match specific briefs to products, helping them with the development of designing ideas.
Scotch egg design Revive Scotch Eggs with this design and development activity.
Now for something completely different Using a design strategy called morphology, students are given a number of product labels (jaffa cakes, cheese and onion quiche, soup, chocolate drink) and are asked to use these as design inspiration to come up with ideas for a completely different product such as a muffin, a biscuit, a desssert, an energy bar. The idea is to morph from one product into another, retaining some of the features and characteristics of the original.

Design futures

Get students to think out of the box to develop design ideas within a food context.

back to Curriculum Matters main page

©foodforum.org.uk 2006-07. All rights reserved.