Home

                              Teacher's Pages

                       Activity 18 - Snicker's Circle

                                                                       Activity 18 - Students Pages

Apply new ideas - Teacher Fade

Purpose:

 To provide another context for students to use the idea of photosynthesis and to introduce new ideas about plants' critical role in ecosystems as food producers.

Materials:

Snickers Bar label of ingredients for each pair or group of students
Snack size Snickers bars to eat at the end of the lesson (optional)

FRAME

"What if there were no plants in the world? Would it really matter to lose plants from our environment?
Couldn't we just eat other things?"

Elicit students' ideas. Some will talk about food chains. Others may be pretty convinced that there are other sources of food besides plants that we could use to stay alive even if there were no longer any plants.



ACTIVITY

Show students how to read the Snickers Bar ingredients.

Start with the whole class doing the first ingredient together, trying to figure out where that food comes from.

Group Work: Have students work in groups to identify ingredients and their plant sources.

Whole Class Discussion:

"What did you figure out?"

The ingredients should include:

milk chocolate from cocao plants
peanuts from peanut plants
corn syrup from corn plants
milk from cows who eat grass as their food
vanilla from vanilla bean plants
soy protein from soybeans
sugar from cane sugar plants

"So could we live on Snickers Bars if there were no plants in the world? Explain your thinking."

REFLECT AND CONNECT

"So when you are walking outside and notice plants today, you are going to think about Snickers Bars, aren't you?!!?? What do Snickers Bars have to do with plants?"

"What do Snickers Bars have to do with photosynthesis?"

Desired Response: The food that is in the Snickers bar was made during the process of photosynthesis in several different kinds of plants. People took extra food that the different plants made and mixed them together to make a Snickers Bar. Without the plants, people could not make Snickers Bars because people cannot make energy-containing food out of carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight like plants can.