The controlled assessment makes up 60% of your overall grade so it is really important that you know what is involved and take an interest in researching the products you are making and developing. You cannot work on your controlled assessment outside of lesson time, however you can research recipes and developments, existing products and ask others for their opinions on products you have made and might want to make for the project.
This is how your work is assessed:
Getting going…
The first stage is choosing an appropriate design task. You should choose a top and brief that interests you and that best suits the skills that you have developed. You should choose from the attached list of tasks:
GCSE Food Tech CA Tasks (2015-2016)
1. Initial Research – Moodboard
As a starting point you should then research the topic and find out about as much information and existing products as you can. A useful way to present this information is as a moodboard. This is only a starting point but will help you gather a wide range of information in one place as a starting point. Your work will be presented on A3 landscape so you need to take this into consideration when setting out your work.
2. Design Brief and Analysis of the Task
The design brief is the start of the GCSE coursework. You will be provided with a task by your teacher which has been selected from a list of tasks provided by AQA (the examination board).
Your design brief should clearly state your intentions and what you hope to achieve.
In order to gain top marks you are required to read the context, highlight the key words and write a summary where you analyse and list the key points.
Areas to ask.
– What ingredients could be suitable?
– Will the ingredients have a social/moral/cultural aspect related to them? e.g fairtrade, organic, food miles etc.
– Who is the target market?
– How could the ingredients be used/combined?
– What finishing techniques could I apply?
– What manufacturing processes could I use to manufacture my product?
– What is the products main purpose? i.e which meal/snack/tmg
– What will its appearance, theme be?
– How big or small could it be? What will be the most appropriate shape/weight?
– Where will the product be sold/consumed?
– Are there any suitable standard components you could use?
3. Specialist Research into the Design Brief
4. Existing Product Research
This is a summary of current products available similar to the one you have chosen to develop as your final product. You will also need to carry out a detailed product dissassembly of a similar product before you begin your development section.
5. Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural Aspects of the Design Brief
6. Customer Research – Questionnaire
- A very important aspect of research work is a survey or questionnaire.
- This will show the examiner that you have produced individual research relating directly to your project.
- A questionnaire is usually composed of a series of questions that are put to a number of people. The results can be collected as a table of results and/or a graph or pictogram.
- Questionnaire’s) can help you design your product because they may tell you what the market wants.
Types of Questions
Multiple choice
–A number of possible options is given e.g.
What’s your favourite vegetable?
A) Carrot
B ) Broccoli
C) Courgette
D) Sweetcorn
Closed Question
–This type restricts the answer to a Yes or No e.g.
Do you like broccoli?
Open Question
–This type of question allows to interviewee to answer in more detail. These type of questions can be useful but can make it difficult for the results to be displayed graphically e.g.
What do you think the benefits of eating wholemeal pasta are?
Sliding Scale
–This allows the answer to be given according to how strongly someone feels e.g.:
Do you think that pasta is a good source of energy?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Disagree Agree
Presenting your results
Present your results in graphical form where possible. This is a good opportunity to use your ICT skills.
On your results page make some conclusions.
What do your results tell you? How will it help you in your design? Use the “findings from” box for a final summary of what you’ve learned. e.g. From the question below we can infer that the most popular fruit is raspberry, this helps with my design as I now know that this would be a popular flavour to incorporate into my product.
7. Analysis of Research and Design Specification
Research Analysis needs to summarise all the things you have learned from your research section. Essentially putting all your “findings from” together.
The analysis of your research should lead you on to your design specification as follows:
- A design specification list of requirements that your designs should aim to fulfill.
- This will be used to measure the success of your final design so you must always design towards these limitations.
- All the criteria must come from the results of your research (otherwise your results have no value and you will have wasted a big number of marks).
Write your specification points in full sentences, not in note form. Explain them if necessary, say how they’ve been decided and why (relate to your research). For example:
- The price of the meal should be between £1.50 and £2.75 as this was the range of prices I found when I did my supermarket research.
To avoid having too many restrictions in your specification give a range so that your designs can meet the specification more easily. For example:
- The results of my consumer survey show that the type of dish should be continental. This can include Indian, Chinese, Mexican, etc.
8. Initial Ideas
Your initial design ideas are an opportunity to explore possible solutions that meet the design brief that has been set and the specification. You should produce 12 initial ideas. Annotation should be added to explain your ideas in detail and depth.
Annotations should include:
- name of product
- description of product
- weight
- size (h,w,d)
- appearance (colour)
- ingredients (inc. functions and nutrition)
- sensory vocabulary (i.e. sweet, chewy, crunchy, soft, hot, spicy etc.)
- comment on positive/negative health benefits
- allergies/special diets
- notes on decoration or finishing techniques (e.g. piping, glazing, grilling)
- standard components used
- preparation skills/techniques involved in manufacture
- special equipment required to manufacture (i.e. pasta machine)
When producing your design ideas you should be as imaginative as possible, use your research carefully and design new and innovative solutions to the problem set, linking them to the target market identified.
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9. Design Ideas/Recipe Trials
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Of your 12 ideas, you will make at least 6 trial products based on those ideas. You need a planning sheet for each trial product. The planning sheets should include:
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10 – Product Specification
This is a more detailed specification, usually written when the final product has been decided upon. It may be given to a chef in a test kitchen and then will undergo sensory testing before the decision is made to produce it on a large scale.
For example:
“The pastry will be rolled out to 15cm squares.”
“It will contain mushrooms, sweetcorn, cheese sauce and chicken.”
“It will cost between £1 and £1.50p.”
Here are some ideas of what to include to produce a successful specification…
- Describe colour, texture, flavour, aroma etc…
- Specific dimensions (with a sketch) – for instance, weight, size, shape.
- Specific qualities of ingredients – for example, percentage of fat in meat, size of cherries.
- Names of ingredients with weights and proportions to use – for example, “200g butter, 450g flaked haddock.”
- Specific tolerances – for example, thickness of pastry, viscosity (runniness) of sauce.
- The size to which ingredients must be cut – for example, the exact shape and size of pieces of fruit and vegetables, the nozzle size for mincing meat, the slicing grade for carrots, the grating size for cheese.
- Types of cooking methods and cooking temperatures with critical control points.
- Cooling times and methods.
- Finishing techniques – for example, “Brush with whole egg glaze before baking”, “Fill centre of cake with fresh whipped cream to a thickness of 2cm”, “Decorate with six slices of tomato and one teaspoonful of mixed herbs before cooking”, “Cover surface of biscuit with white rolled icing to a thickness of 0.5cm.”
- Specific details of packaging requirements – for example, microwavable dish with sealed film covering in crushproof sleeve.”
- Wording for the label, which will provide information for the consumer about ingredients, nutrition, the name of the product, storage and cooking/reheating instructions, shelf life, etc.
- Sometimes a photograph is used to help a manufacturer to meet that specification. This would normally still need additional written information, but is useful in large-scale catering where a meal is being assembled on a plate from bought components.
- Identifiey potential allergy risks
11 – Developments
Once you have analysed your trial products and have a good idea of what could be developed into a final design you can begin to experiment and develop your ideas further. To gain higher marks you should look to develop your idea by looking at:
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foodhealthandtextiles 