Ranking Favorites

Instructions

Time Considerations: 30-60 minutes

Materials Needed: Paper and pens, or paper and a printer, to make cards with a relevant word or image on them

Participants: Small group of students and caregivers

Step One

Make your deck of cards for the game using the food items, spices, cuisines, packaging preferences or something else you’d like to test. Add a word or a picture on each card in the card template provided here; but whatever you select, make sure it’s easy to understand. 

Step Two

When tailoring your deck of cards to whatever it is you are trying to learn about, be sure that you’re mixing concrete ideas with more abstract ones. You can learn a lot about how a student understands their world by making this exercise more than just a simple ranking. Perhaps you are trying to understand what’s important to students and caregivers about new meals. The cards might include “The smell,” “How it looks,” “How it’s eaten,” “How it tastes,” “A specific spice,” “What occasion it’s eaten at..”.

Step Three

Ask a student or a group of students for help. Give them each a set of cards (it’s important that they get to do the activity as an individual, rather than having to come to agreement) and ask them to sort the cards according to what’s most important to them. Do the same with the caregivers with an identical card deck.

Step Four

Have a discussion about their choices and the compare the two. Are the rankings by students similar to that of caregivers? Ask questions like, “Will you tell me more about why this one is important to you?” “Can you give me an example of what you thought of when you saw this card?” You may discover agreement between the kids and their caregivers, but you also might find that their ideas diverge when it comes to health, taste, and other factors.

Tool

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