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Sense Tests in the School Garden

Grade 6 life science: garden taste tests with a nose clip, a two-point touch test and a herb sniff test show how sense receptors, the brain and memory work together.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-LS1-8

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
12 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students analyze test data to explain how signals from sense receptors help the brain identify a stimulus.
Students relate how closely receptors are packed to how finely a body part senses touch.
Students use evidence to explain how experiences are stored as memories that change behavior.

How to use

Read paragraph 1 and Test 1 together before students begin; if you repeat the tests in class, check allergies first and use only washed foods.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-LS1-8

Explain how sense receptors send signals to the brain that lead to behavior or are stored as memories.

Preview

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Name Date

Sense Tests in the School Garden

Use taste, touch and smell tests to explain how senses send signals to the brain.

Test 1: Tasting with a nose clip

Read the passage and the first table, then answer the questions.

Senses Week in the Garden

1Every Friday, Mr. Femi Adekunle's sixth graders work in their school's garden and greenhouse. In May, after they picked their spring crops, the class spent a week testing their senses. Mr. Adekunle checked the class allergy list first, and every food was washed.

2Test 1 used four foods from the garden. Sixteen students wore blindfolds, chewed a small piece of each food and tried to name it. Each student tasted every food twice: once breathing normally and once wearing a soft clip that closed the nose. For half of the students the clip came first, and for the other half it came second. Taste receptors on the tongue detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory tastes. Smell receptors high inside the nose detect odors in the air that moves through the nose, including air that rises from food in the mouth.

3Test 2 was about touch. Hana Petrakis bent a paper clip so its two blunt ends were a set distance apart. With her partner's eyes closed, she gently touched the skin with either one end or both ends, and her partner said "one" or "two." They found the smallest gap at which the partner could tell two points apart most of the time, and the class averaged its results.

4Test 3 was a sniff test. Eight cups each held a crushed leaf of a garden herb, such as mint, basil, dill or rosemary. Blindfolded students sniffed each cup and named the herb. The same class had taken this test in September, on their first day in the garden. In May, Mr. Adekunle also gave it to six students who had joined the class in April.