AP research is a class offered at the High School since 2020. The class teaches students how to conduct original research to fill a gap in the existing research. The class culminates with a 5,000 word paper to be submitted to the college board for scoring. The AP Research teacher, Rebecca Jaramillo, decided to team up with the culinary department to make a fun and exciting activity to exercise her class’s ability to write instructions using a recipe of their choice. The research students wrote recipes which the culinary students followed exactly as written. Students were able to see immediately whether their method was clear or not.
“Doing this helps us see how we need to be more specific and go into details for all of the steps when we are writing a research process for someone to follow later,” said senior AP Research student Irvin Cruz.
By receiving feedback from culinary students on their recipe instructions, it allows for a new perspective and offers helpful critiques and feedback to later apply to research students’ written methods. Students learned to be very specific on details when writing directions for someone else to follow.
“Usually they just see my recipes or they’re writing the recipes so they kind of know what’s supposed to happen, “culinary arts teacher Suzanne Duncan said. “So, for them to be given the recipe for the first time and then going through with it and having to interpret somebody else’s words is very interesting and fun.”
The week in the kitchen was full of everything from brownies, to spaghetti, pancakes, and burgers. For the culinary students it was quite a range of foods and definitely an interesting combination of them all. Not only was it a challenge for the writers, but the culinary students who had to follow the instructions given.
“When cooking, you have to wait a certain amount of time before cooking,” senior culinary student Bianca Garcia said. “Or we did have some recipes where it didn’t have measurements, so we had to put our minds to it to put in measurements together.”
This experiment was a learning experience for both the culinary and research students. Whether writing the instructions clear enough for someone else to be able to understand it, or having to work around directions that may not be the clearest. This exercise was an exciting adventure for all who were involved.
“Students often make a lot of assumptions when writing their research methods without even realizing it,” Jaramillo said. “The College Board scoring rubric for AP Research is that research methods must be reasonably replicable. Having students write recipes is the perfect way to practice this style of writing.”
The collaboration between Mrs. Jaramillo’s AP Research class and the culinary department provided valuable lessons in the importance of clear, detailed communication. This project tested their ability to write precise instructions for recipes. Students learned about the challenges of guiding others through a process, while culinary students learned to adapt and interpret instructions. This unique hands-on experience proved to be both educational and enjoyable, promoting teamwork and critical thinking among all participants.
“See, this project gave me perspective and it made me visualize how important instructions really are,” senior AP Research student Mark Sifuentes said. “The bad instructions were reflected in the horrible outcomes whereas good, concise, clear instructions were reflected in a delicious yummy treat. So, I think it’s a very fun way to teach students about the importance of being concise in their research work.”
