This WebQuest provides an activity for students to learn about their sense of taste. Students will be given samples of foods like pretzels, oranges, and ice cream to identify the basic tastes of salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. They will write down their guesses and explain why they identified each taste. The activity aims to help students understand and recognize the four different types of taste through hands-on learning.

1. Maggie Beckelheimer
CI 350
WebQuest Assignment
WebQuest (Word document)
Title: Your Sense of Taste
Description: The purpose of this WebQuest is to provide a semi in depth assessment of the sense
of taste, as related to your five senses.
Grade Level: K-3
Key Words: Taste, Five Senses, Education
Introduction: We will begin explore the sense of taste and explain how taste works. We will
achieve this by discovering the different types of tastes, and objects that we easily relate to them.
We will use a hands on activity to gain the young students attention.
Task: In this exercise we will be working individually. Each student will sit at their desk and
will be given samples of different kinds of food to see if they can differentiate between tastes.
The kinds of tastes we will be exploring are: salty, sour, sweet, and bitter.
Process: ***IMPORTANT: Please make sure that none of your students have any food
allergies before you continue & always use cafeteria prepared foods!***
-Before we begin our fun activity the students must research the four different types of taste
(salty, sour, sweet, and bitter). Below are provided materials and links to get you started!
-Every student should now be seated individually, with their eyes closed (or their hands over
their own eyes) which ever the student feels more comfortable.
-Each student will pick up the sample of food given, in this case we are going to use pretzels for
salty, oranges for sour, ice cream for sweet, and scientific taste paper for bitter (safest bitter taste
available).
-One eaten they will write down if it is salty, sweet, sour, or bitter and they will attempt to see if
they can guess what food they ate.
-Afterwards they will attempt to tell me why they thought the taste was sweet, sour, etc. We are
doing this to make sure they have knowledge from our pre-activity exercise.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html#Umami
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0033701/

2. http://www.diffen.com/difference/Bitter_vs_Sour
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/11/134459338/Getting-a-Sense-of-How-We-Taste-Sweetness
http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/pregastric/taste.html
Evaluation: In order to meet the standards for this activity, each student must explain one of the
senses to me (they will not know which sense I am going to ask them so it is important that they
have researched during our pre-activity). They must have also tried to participate in our taste test
activity (unless dietary needs or religious beliefs state otherwise.
Try Again Great Awesome Score (%)
Participation Didn’t want to try. Gave the foods a shot. Tried everything with a smile. 15%
Knowledge Used common knowledge. Gave some details. Gave lots of information to me. 65%
Research Didn’t use research time. Researched a little bit. Noticeably used research time! 20%
Total Score: 100%
Conclusion: Great Job class! Now that we completed our lesson you really know a lot about
your sense of taste! You should all now be able to recognize and tell the difference between
salty, sour, sweet, and bitter.
Teacher Page:
Credits- http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html#Umami
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0033701/
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Bitter_vs_Sour
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/11/134459338/Getting-a-Sense-of-How-We-Taste-Sweetness
http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/pregastric/taste.html
Objectives:
We Identified objects by using the sense of taste. (PS-E-A1).
*This lesson was designed to grasp the attention of you students, so teach accordingly*