What is the best Chocolate?

Class Activity
Time:
Testing Process --- 10-15 minutes
Debrief --- 8-10 minutes
Materials needed:
Graph Paper
Chocolate of various types

Outcomes:
Students will adopt a criteria or methodology in order to make initial knowledge claims
Students will evaluate the various strengths and weaknesses of competing criteria used to make knowledge claims

Directions:​ Put students in groups of 3-5, give them a piece of graph paper and several different types and brands of small chocolates and then assign them the
following task:
​“Your assignment is to determine which is the best chocolate”
and then
“Be prepared to explain your choice.”
Students may ask you a variety of questions regarding procedure, or how they should determine the best chocolate. Give as little help as possible, using a
Socratic method to get them working. I like to agree with just about anything I can (yes you can eat the chocolate, yes you can search on the internet, yes you
should be meticulous in your data collection) and direct them only when I must. But I do like to point out when they are doing the following:
Establishing a set of criteria Adopting a methodology Providing justifications for knowledge claims

There are many ways they might take in order to determine what is the “Best Chocolate” including but not limited to:
Highest Sales #’s Most International Awards, Taste Test Winners
Percentage of Chocolate Content How it tastes to me….. Etc. Etc.

After about 10 minutes I will begin a discussion of how they completed the task. I am hoping that this activity will allow students to understand that there are many
different knowledge claims they could make, and that depending on the type of knowledge claim, different methodology/criteria or justifications may come into play.
If this is true, it would imply that there are many different types of knowledge, and so this leads into a distinction between Platonic “knowledge” versus the
knowledge that, for example, “I know this chocolate tastes darn good.”

How to Make the Best Chocolate​ and ​This Canadian Chocolate Maker named best in the World​ -- Students can compare their criteria with the criteria
established/used in these two videos.
What is the Best Chocolate? 

Criteria: Rationale:

In this box write your up your findings concerning which is the best
chocolate: