A multi-step research about food around the world! This project has students start researching popular foods all over the world and finishes the research with a physical menu and plate project.

Steps to the project...

1. Intro to Food Research Document - Students will be asked to research three countries popular foods. This allows you to assess student interest in countries and get them used to the format of the research style.
2. Expanded Research Document - Students will be asked to focus on one of the countries they have researched in their Intro to Food Research Document. This asks students to analyze each food object identified by asking a number of questions relating how the food is eaten, the main ingredients, etc. All the research that is done on this document will go directly onto the menu.
3. Global Menu Project - This is first creation portion of the project. This asks students to create a menu based on their country with ALL of the research they have been doing. The instructions to this portion of the project are provided on both a Google Doc (editable) but also a step by step PDF presentation (not editable).
4. Global Plate Project - This is the last creation portion of the project. This portion of the project asks students to choose ONE of the dishes they have researched to draw on a paper plate. In my classroom, students were given the option to craft their plates using art materials (airdry clay, card board, and foam), however, that is not necessary at all. This was used as an extension and allowed students who finished early to invest their time into another enrichment task. The project could be done without this step!

Students loved to do this project. They found it extremely interesting and were only slightly annoyed that they couldn't actually eat any of the food they were researching! They also appreciated that rather than researching for the sake of researching, they were actually using their research to complete a larger task.