Prueba a Ciegas

Above:
A student tries different kinds of "refrescos" (soda) in a blind taste test conducted in my 8th grade Spanish 1 class.

The past two years, I have been focusing on moving away from paper tests and creating assessment scenarios that are task-based and hands-on.  I believe that real-life scenarios draw communication out of students in a way that paper tests can't.  On a paper test, if a student doesn't know an answer, she might leave a blank; in a real-world scenario, if a student doesn't know the answer, she won't be able to finish the task and won't be able to have the experience.  Students have greater incentive to learn the vocabulary and grammar structures.  In addition, I think task-based assessments help seal the learning in place.  A student is more likely to remember the word "manzana" if she is holding one and tasting one, rather than if she sees it on a vocabulary list. 

La prueba a ciegas, or “Spanish Blind Taste Project,” was the culmination of a unit on likes/dislikes and food in my Spanish 1 class.  Students each selected a food item and then had to bring in three variations of it, for example: red apples, green apples, and yellow apples.  They worked in teams.  On the first day of the test, one person worked the taste test booth while the other person rotated and tasted different items; the next day, they switched.  

"Las papas fritas" (potato chips) station ended up being the trickiest one. My students had a lot of difficulty differentiating between brands of chips.

​To start, each person asked demographic information of their classmates - always good to sneak in practice of the traditional questions that are taught in the first year.

• ¿Cómo te llamas?
• ¿Cuántos años tienes?
• ¿Dónde vives?
• etc.

Students then gave each other commands like, "Cierra los ojos" (Close your eyes), and had their classmates taste different items.  Students were able to use a variety of "gustar" phrases:

• No me gusta / Me parece fatal
• Me da igual
• Me gusta muchísimo
• etc.

To conclude, students entered all their information into spreadsheets and graphed their findings.  We experimented with the free, web-based tool, Piktochart.  Students represented their findings visually with different graphs, and then wrote a paragraph describing what a blind test taste is and what things they found out about the food item they tested.

Day 1 – Introduction and explanation of project

Day 2 -  In-class practice

Day 3 – In-class practice

Day 4 - In-class practice

Day 4 – Taste Test Day 1

Day 5 – Taste Test Day 2

Day 6 – Data analysis

Day 7 - Data analysis with Piktochart

Day 8 - Piktochart continued

While this project was designed for my introductory Spanish class, it could be adapted to any grade level, and any language.  The questions they asked could be more complicated, and the write-up at the end of the project could be longer.  Instead of a short paragraph, it could be a lab report, for example.​​