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Phase 1
1 Opening Event In a large group meeting, the students discussed their lunch and lunch boxes that they brought to school.	2 Brainstorm Ideas Children brainstormed ideas about food.	3 Categorize Ideas Teachers led a discussion about listening for similarities in order to categorize their ideas on chart paper.	4 Label Categories Children debated names for categories and created Student Food Topic Web 1.	5 Share Personal Stories The teacher shared stories of how she made her lunch. Students shared personal experiences with food at large group meetings.
6 Illustrate Stories Students used markers to write and illustrate their memory stories. They drew about breakfasts, and lunches that they liked to eat.	7 Share Stories Students shared their stories and pictures at large group meetings. They noted similarities and differences in experiences.Teachers displayed the categorized stories on the wall.	8 Collect Data Students developed questionnaires to find out what classmates already knew about food. They asked questions such as, "Have you eaten Brazilian food," and "Do you like pepperoni pizza?"	9 Represent Findings Children represented their findings using bar graphs. Students used clay, play dough, paint, KidPix and boxes and junk to represent their memories of food.	10 Articulate Questions Teachers and students wondered about food. They articulated questions:Is macaroni and cheese good for you? How does food grind up in your stomach? How do you keep food from getting moldy? What is in soup to make it taste good?
Phase 2
11 Group Planning Students began exploring food in five groups to answer their questions. They decided they needed to go to the grocery store, a cafeteria, a feed mill, a greenhouse, and some restaurants.	12 Make Predictions Before each site visit, students articulated questions and formed predictions about what they would learn on their field studies.	13 Engage in Field Work* Students collected data to answer their questions about food. They visited a nature center, cafeteria, corn and soybean fields, a greenhouse, grocery store, and two pizza shops. Students interviewed experts, collected artifacts, counted, made observational field sketches, and took pictures. *This may take weeks!	14 Debrief Students shared their findings at large group meetings. They compared their findings to their predictions.	15 Create Representations Students represented their findings with constructions, clay models, paintings, and graphic organizers.
16 Share At large group meetings, students shared their progress on their surveys, representations and experiments. Classmates offered suggestions for refinement.	17 Plans for Visiting Expert Students formulated questions about food and predicted what visiting experts might say to answer their questions.	18 Expert Visitor Experts included: a plant biologist, a botanist, a nutritional nurse, a nutritional scientist, a parent who spoke about taste buds, a parent who made foods from scratch, a parent who brought exotic foods to taste, a physician, a pizza chef, a puppet, an undergraduate nursing student, and others.	19 Debrief Students compared experts' answers to their predictions. They made observational drawings of plants and other items that experts brought to share with them.	20 Continue Investigation Students conducted experiments related to food. For example, they placed plants in a variety of conditions in the room (in the dark, in light, without water, without dirt, etc.).
Phase 3
21 Representations Students created many 3-dimensional representations of food equipment including a grocery display shelf, tractor, pizza dough mixer, flattener and oven.	22 Articulate What Children Have Learned The whole group discussed what they had learned about food. The teacher asked individual children to respond to what they had learned.	23 Brainstorm Second Topic Web Students brainstormed what they now know about food.	24 Label and Categorize Ideas With the teachers, the students categorized what they knew about food and developed the Student Topic Web 2.	25 Plan for Sharing Students brainstormed ideas for the culminating activity. They wanted a potluck and planned to share a skit, booklets, poems, and PowerPoint presentations.
26 Project Highlights Students shared aspects of their investigation by making murals, reports, booklets, representations and PowerPoint presentations.	27 Imaginative Activity Students wrote variations on the Jack and the Beanstalk and The Lady who Swallowed a Fly. They integrated food into poems and riddles. They created a skit entitled Eating the Right Amount of Food.	28 Display Students contributed to the class display. Teachers placed their stories, webs, reflections, new vocabulary lists, graphs, and pictures on the walls.	29 Culmination Parents gathered in the room to hear the PowerPoint presentations, reading of stories and poems, a dramatic skit and song. Then they toured the room to read the displays and ate at the potluck.	30 Evaluation Students and parents reflected on the project by responding to a questionnaire. Teachers examined Students' Portfolios to assess growth and learning.

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