Teachers Notes: Cooking Bolognese

Resources needed for this lesson: Pen and paper, student hand-out
(attached)
Lesson length: Approximately 1 hour
Aimed at: GCSE/AS Level Students
Slides 2 to 5: Task, Useful Information, Your Tasks and Precedence
Table
(approximately 10 minutes)
Introduce the task given and make sure the students understand what
they are being asked to do. Briefly go over the useful information: not
too much detail is needed here however as this slide is included on the
student hand-out (which will be distributed later).
Tell the students that they have found a recipe online which outlines the
different tasks they need to complete (please see slide 4) and how long it
will approximately take them to complete each activity.
Ask the students to use this and, in groups or pairs, think about which
tasks can only occur after other tasks have been completed. The students
should display their workings out in a table, considering each new activity
in turn. Draw this table on the board so that students understand how
they should display their ideas:
Activity
A - Boil water
B - Add pasta to water and
cook
C - Chop up onion, carrot and
bacon
D - Cook minced/quorn meat
E - Add onion, carrot, bacon
and tomato puree to
minced/quorn meat and stir
F - Drain pasta
G - Mix Bolognese and pasta
together and serve

Depends on

State that this is called a precedence table.

Ask students to then compare their table to the correct table shown on
slide 5: precedence table.
Slide 6: Activity Network
(approximately 5-10 minutes)
Explain that an activity network is a visual way of displaying the
information given in the precedence table.
Use the diagram on slide 6, showing the activity network, to explain what
each part of the activity network means.

Earliest start time

This is the earliest possible time the activity can start, without
delaying the overall minimum project time possible.
Latest finish time
This is the latest possible finish time for the activity to be completed
by, without delaying the overall minimum project time.
Dummy activity
This is an activity which has zero duration. Its purpose is to show
that activity E must only occur once activities C and D have been
completed.

Explain that the purpose of creating an activity network is to be able to

calculate the earliest start times and latest finish times of each activity, in
order to find out what the critical time of the project is. The critical
time of the project is the quickest time the project can be completed in,
taking into consideration the constraints of any activities which depend on
others having been completed beforehand.
Slide 7: Critical Path Analysis
(approximately 5-10 minutes)
Tell the students that this whole procedure is called critical path
analysis. Its purpose is to allow one to understand all of the activities
which need to be completed for a specific project and organise when
exactly they need to be completed by. Inform students that it relates to
the discipline of Operational Research. Operational Research involves
applying often advanced and analytical methods to real life problems, in
order to help make better decisions.

Ask the students if they can think of any examples where this may be
used in real life and why this algorithm would be useful. (E.g. building a
house critical path analysis is useful here so that the project manager
can ensure that materials for specific tasks are ready on time/staff are
available etc.)
Show students the examples on the board. Briefly discuss the case study
on Network Rail, by clicking the link to navigate you to the appropriate
webpage.
Slides 8 and 9: Working Out the Earliest Start Time (EST) and Working
Out the Latest Finish Time
(approximately 5-10 minutes)
For these slides, explain to students how they calculate the Earliest Start
Time and Latest Finish Time, using the information given on the slides.
This slide is very important because students will need to do these
calculations themselves later on in the lesson therefore feel free to take
some time emphasising each point on the slides.
Slides 10 to 19: Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
(approximately 5-10 minutes)
This is a short quiz in the style of who wants to be a millionaire? to test
students about what they have just learnt about the calculations needed
to work out the earliest start times and latest finish times of activities in a
network. The navigation is already correctly in place, so when students
choose an answer, click on the appropriate answer on the slide and it will
lead you to either a congratulatory slide or a sorry your answer is
incorrect slide. Once the quiz is finished (i.e. the students reach the final
congratulatory slide saying they have won 1,000,000 or they have
reached the sorry your answer is incorrect slide), go straight to slide 20.
Encourage large student participation for this activity: they should discuss
their answers in pairs or groups of 3.
Slide 20 (and 21): Your Turn!
(approximately 10-15 minutes)
Distribute the student hand-out. This gives all of the information from the
slides about the task and how to calculate the Earliest Start Times and
Latest Finish Times of each activity. The second section is then a copy of
the activity network for cooking spaghetti bolognese. Encourage students

to calculate the earliest start times and latest finish times of each activity,
in order to complete the activity network.
(Please see slide 21 for a copy of what the completed activity network
should look like.)
Once students have found the critical time of the project (35 minutes),
they should add this time plus the 1 hour it takes for one to eat the
spaghetti bolognese and wash up afterwards to 7pm to get 8.35pm. Using
this, they should then be able to conclude that, after adding on a further
15 minutes to include the walk to the cinema, the film showing that one
should go and see is at 9.00pm (due to one arriving at the cinema at
8.50pm).
If time at the end, ask students why this plan may not be completely
accurate, i.e. what are the disadvantages with the plan in terms of coming
up with a definite solution. (Answers could include: some activities may
take longer than expected as the lengths are only approximate, external
factors such as one getting distracted by a flatmate returning home, one
may not have all of the necessary ingredients/equipment to complete a
specific task.)
Slide 22: Evaluation
(approximately 10 minutes: 5 minutes evaluating and 5 minutes
discussion)
Ask students to work independently to answer the questions given on the
slide. This task is intended to prompt students to reflect on what they
have learnt during the task, as well as help them to consolidate the
material covered.
Conclude by discussing with the students the answers they have come up
with.