(Four women in front of Williamstown High sign) Williamstown High School sophomores Willow Somerville, left, Riah Sprouse, center left, teacher Shannon Stewart, center right, and sophomore Audrey Coiner, right, hold Bake Boxes, cooking projects being sent home this week for the WHS Baking and Pastry Foundations class.

Bake Boxes give students tasty hands-on projects

 

WILLIAMSTOWN - Students in Williamstown High School’s Baking and Pastry Foundations class are taking home “Bake Boxes” this week as part of a series of tasty and hands-on lessons.

The students picked up the baking boxes Monday at Williamstown High and will use the ingredients to prepare a dessert at home while uploading videos and photos to show their progress and results.

Teacher Shannon Stewart said remote learning and instruction can be a particular challenge for technical skills classes which tend to require more hands-on participation. The Bake Boxes allow the students a chance to have fun while practicing those skills.

“This week is white chocolate peppermint cookies, just something festive to get them started,” Stewart said. 

Sophomore Audrey Coiner said she was excited to try this week’s recipe and sample the results. 

“We’re supposed to be baking in class, but since we are online we can’t really get together and do that,” she said. The bake boxes allow them to cook while seeing what their classmates are doing as well, she said.

“We’ll make it, our family can eat some, we can eat some,” Coiner said. “It’s a win-win.” 

Stewart said it took about two days to fully prepare the 32 Bake Boxes to be sent home this week, and the ingredients have to stay refrigerated, so students had a relatively short window of time to pick up their materials and take them home. Nearly all of the boxes were picked up this week, she said. 

The Bake Box program was developed as a way to not only give the students some hands-on experience, but also to vary the ways they are learning remotely. 

"The online learning components can be overwhelming for some students, so this gives them a chance to create and be hands-on,” Stewart said.

Stewart said she would like to see the class develop the technology component even more in the future, perhaps by adapting a baking show competition format. The students already plan to have a decorative sugar cookie competition for the next Bake Box project. 

“We’ll be doing this once a week any time we are remote learning,” she said. 

Similar programs will begin next week at Parkersburg High School and Parkersburg South High School. Stewart said the plans were developed in cooperation with teachers from all three schools.