Research and Theory on Generating and Testing Hypotheses

What?

I gave a group of students ingredients to make a cake. They were given a limited amount of each ingredient (ie three eggs max). They were then told to decide how much of each ingredient from a list of measurements goes into the cake and were given a time to cook the cake. Students were shown an example of how the cake should look. Once their cake was done, the students were told to take their cakes apart and were told to come up with a hypothesis for why their cakes came out the way they did (ie they used too much flour). Then the students had to retry the experiment and see if the cake came out any better.

So what?

The students learned how important a recipe is that day! Many of the students got one or two ingredients and the amounts right but none of them got it exactly right.

Now what?

Next year, I think I will use a form to have them theorize on and make it a more formal assessment.