Science · Year 2

Active learning ideas

Exploring Smell, Taste, and Touch

Active learning helps students connect abstract concepts to real experiences, which is essential when exploring senses. These hands-on activities let students investigate smell, taste, and touch through concrete, memorable tasks that build lasting understanding.

• ACARA Content Descriptions
• AC9S2U01

• 20–45 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 4 activities

Activity 01

• Experiential Learning
• 45 min · Small Groups

Sensory Stations: Smell and Taste

Prepare stations with safe foods like fruit slices and jelly. Students first smell items, predict taste, then taste with nose pinched and unpinched, recording differences on charts. Rotate groups every 10 minutes to try all items.

Compare how our sense of smell and taste work together to identify food.

Facilitation Tip

During Sensory Stations, place strong-smelling items like mint or vinegar in small containers so students can safely sniff without contamination.

What to look for

Give students a card with a scenario: 'You are eating a strawberry.' Ask them to write one sentence about how smell and taste work together to enjoy the strawberry. Then, ask them to write one sentence about why smelling smoke is important for safety.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness

Activity 02

• Experiential Learning
• 25 min · Pairs

Touch Box Challenge: Pairs

Fill opaque boxes with everyday objects like balls, blocks, and feathers. Pairs take turns reaching in without looking, describing textures and shapes aloud, then guessing identities. Discuss matches and surprises as a class.

Analyze how we use our sense of touch to identify objects in the dark.

Facilitation Tip

For the Touch Box Challenge, use familiar objects with varied textures and shapes to ensure clear descriptions and avoid confusion.

What to look for

Present students with 3-4 common objects (e.g., a smooth stone, a piece of sandpaper, a soft cloth). Place them in a 'touch box' and ask students to close their eyes and identify each object by touch alone, describing its texture and shape.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness

Activity 03

• Experiential Learning
• 35 min · Whole Class

Safety Smell Hunt: Whole Class

Hide scent jars with safe smells like citrus, vinegar, and chocolate around the room. Students locate and identify them, then discuss safety examples like gas leaks. Create a class safety poster from findings.

Explain why our sense of smell is important for safety.

Facilitation Tip

During the Safety Smell Hunt, include safe but distinct smells like lemon and burnt toast to highlight both pleasant and warning scents.

What to look for

Ask students: 'Imagine you are in a dark room and need to find your toy car. How would you use your sense of touch to find it? What words would you use to describe how it feels?' Record student responses on a chart, focusing on descriptive vocabulary.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness

Activity 04

• Experiential Learning
• 20 min · Individual

Sensory Mapping: Individual

Students draw body outlines and label smell, taste, touch areas. Test with provided items, add notes on what each sense detects best. Share maps in pairs to compare insights.

Compare how our sense of smell and taste work together to identify food.

Facilitation Tip

For Sensory Mapping, provide a word bank of sensory terms to support language development and precise descriptions.

What to look for

Give students a card with a scenario: 'You are eating a strawberry.' Ask them to write one sentence about how smell and taste work together to enjoy the strawberry. Then, ask them to write one sentence about why smelling smoke is important for safety.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness

A few notes on teaching this unit

Teachers should model how to use senses deliberately, such as sniffing gently or feeling edges with fingertips. Avoid rushing students through observations; give them time to notice details. Research shows that multisensory experiences create stronger neural connections, so integrating smell, taste, and touch in one lesson reinforces each sense’s role.

Students will confidently describe how their senses work together, identify objects and textures using touch, and explain the safety role of smell. They will use sensory vocabulary accurately and support their ideas with evidence from their explorations.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Sensory Stations: watch for students who believe smell and taste operate separately.

  Have students taste a food like apple while pinching their noses, then release and taste again. Ask them to compare the strength of flavor in both cases and discuss why the difference occurs.

• During Touch Box Challenge: watch for students who think touch only detects texture.

  Ask students to describe not just texture but also shape, temperature, and size of each object. Model using fingertips and palms to detect edges and curves, then prompt them to do the same.

• During Safety Smell Hunt: watch for students who underestimate smell’s role in safety.

  Include smoke-scented cotton balls and spoiled milk (in a sealed container) during the hunt. After identifying each smell, ask students to explain what danger each scent signals and why it matters.

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Methods used in this brief

• Experiential Learning