A fresh take on topic planning

I had my Yr 8's for the first time this term for a double period this afternoon. I had the entire topic planned out for the next four weeks, but decided over the weekend to dump those plans in order to try another approach to planning and in line with hack you class and the growth mind set. I saw this idea on twitter a couple of days ago and decided it would be really cool way to plan the topic. I did scaffold it as they are Yr 8 and this is probably very new idea for them. It was though a very cool lesson, lots of very cool ideas were discussed.

This is how I went about it.
I first introduced the idea to them and set up framework for how we were going to plan the topic. I handed out the I can do sheet of all the learning outcome we need to cover for Checkpoint just to give them an idea of the direction the topic was going to take.
After that I gave each pair a set of mini whiteboard to answer the 3 questions I posed to the class. What do you already know, what do what to find out and what do you want to know. I gave them 15 minutes in the pairs and wider desk groups to discuss this and come up with ideas.

I then got them to write it all on the whiteboard and we as a class discussed each idea and point. The first question was really useful to gauge the prior learning and knowledge of the students and did bring some really interesting misconception to light which were address as we game up on them. Each of the misconceptions I then added to the second column to address in class.

The what I want to know and do columns were very interesting because it revolved round food a lot which I think reflect the lack of food technology at school and it also very impractical to do in a science lab. The other suggestions were really good and fitted really well with the direction of the topic and showed that the students were really engaged in the process. carrying out a dissection was also very popular with some students and not others, but as soon as i told them it was optional they were all on board.

After recording all the amazing ideas the students had we then turned out attention back to the I can do sheet and all the point we needed to cover. The ideas they game up with on how they wanted to learn about each of the specific outcomes really surprised me. They were AMAZING, one such example that I would of never though off in my wildest dreams was to build a 3D food pyramid of the 6 food groups and foods that are rich sources. I am trying to currently work though the logistics of doing this, any ideas on how to make this work would be greatly appreciated.

The next 4 week should be so much fun and  I am really looking forward to using all the students idea to teach them about food and digestion. They are all as excited as me, let the fun begin.