Earlier this week, Intro to Agriculture students were tasked with making a popcorn product for their food science final project. I had to find out what this project was about and why they were doing it.
I wanted to establish what the project was and why they were doing it, I decided to interview Ms. Pohl, the Intro to Agriculture teacher. My first question to her was what was the project, “Students are put in groups and have to make a unique popcorn product using atleast 2 different ingredients. Then they have to have the class taste their product and the last thing they do is try to sell the product to the other students.” Now that we have this information we can dive into some of the products!
I started with asking the students of the fourth period class what the products were, they all answered that the products were: Puppy Chow popcorn, popcorn balls, and popcorn bars. The first student I talked to was Xander Pacheco. When asked about his product he stated, “We made popcorn balls, they were just popcorn, marshmallows, and chocolate chips.” Another student, Autumn Henthorn, stated,“Ours was popcorn bars! They were popcorn, melted marshmallows, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, and some other things. We also won all around product in our class period.”
The next class was fifth period Intro to Agriculture, I was only able to sit down with one of the students in this class, Addison Belford, about what her group made, “First, my group was me [Addison Belford], Ryley Norris, and Logan Vogel. We made a white chocolate, key lime popcorn, it was alot easier in our heads for sure.” I did get a chance to talk to Ms. Pohl about this class however, I asked her about how this class did, “They did amazing, they had a lot of ideas that weren’t sweets related. One group made Lime and Tajin seasoned popcorn which was pretty cool to see.”
Ultimately, this project was a huge success with lots of students saying they would love to do this instead of a test over the units. Ms. Pohl even agreed stating, “It allows them to be creative and use critical thinking skills while applying the skills they’ve learned instead of just asking them to memorize and repeat information for a test!”
Here are the winners of fourth period:
Taste – Popcorn Balls
Xander Pacheco
Carson Swenson
Ande Girard
Aubree Splattoesser
Sales Pitch – Puppy Chow Popcorn
Isaac Murphy
Wes Connelly
Carter Hindman
Packaging – Popcorn Balls
Xander Pacheco
Carson Swenson
Ande Girard
Aubree Splattoesser
All Around – Popcorn Bars
Autumn Henthorn,
Hadley Shrewsbury,
Emily Carillo
The winners of fifth period: they won all their categories
Austen McCracken
Harper Setter
Kaelyn Mazanec
