Science: Ice cream topic -designing, making and tasting ice cream (12-15 year old)

This is the perfect topic to end the year on. It is fun and the students don't even realise there is a serious aspect to it: healthy eating, analysing food etc. You can adjust the depth and type of learning outcomes depending on the age group (eg. if it is an older group I always include a section on microbiology and we swab surfaces and check for cleanliness, learn about how factories manage food safety etc).

This topic encourages student-led learning and there is considerable enthusiasm in the classroom. You do not need to have an ice cream machine, although I did and there is often someone in the class who does have one). I have written up a rough guide on how the 1-2 weeks would go but I found that the students really enjoyed their own research and in some years this took longer than I originally had planned for.

This resource includes: notes for teacher, a base ice cream recipe, ice cream in a bag activity, taste testing template, energy calculation activity and some other ideas (eg poster design).

It is a lot of fun and will save you that painful end of year "now what do we do"?