labs in elementary science classroom (teacher)

Doing Labsin

Elementary School

By Moira Whitehouse PhD

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Why is so important for students to take part in science labs and hands-on activities?

Because that’s the way they

learn.

• Students are much more engaged in the learning process.

• Elementary school students are concrete thinkers. Hands-on activities helps them make the leap to a more abstract understanding of a scientific process and/or concept.

• Labs and activities are fun and students develop a positive attitude towards learning science.

• Labs teach inferential reasoning skills.

Important questions to ask yourself when doing labs or activities…

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1. Is this a lab or activity I should be doing?

2. How can I best manage my students?

4. What kind of signal can I use to get the students’ attention during the lab or activity?

3. How can I best manage the materials?

5. How should I reinforce the concept(s) presented in the lab or activity?

6. What do I need to do to make this lab or activity safe for the students?

We’ve all found that “fun” lab or activity that is just right for the time of year. Maybe is it was making pipe cleaner stars at Christmas by dipping the pipe cleaners in a supersaturated borax solution. When the water evaporates, shimmering crystals cling to the pipe cleaners making a beautiful star. Sounds perfect—kids would love it.

We’ve all found that “fun” lab or activity that is just right for the time of year. Maybe is it was making pipe cleaner stars at Christmas by dipping the pipe cleaners in a supersaturated borax solution. When the water evaporates, shimmering crystals cling to the pipe cleaners making a beautiful star. Sounds perfect—kids would love it.

1. In selecting the lab ask yourself:•What is the point of doing this lab or

activity?•What concept is the lab or activity supposed to teach the students?

•And most importantis this lab or activity tied to

developing an understanding of one of the science objectives for my grade level?

If the answer to the last question is

NO this lab or activity does NOT belong in your science curriculum.

The student expectations (SE’s) for this grade level should help you decide. Does the focus of the lab address a concept that your students should have mastered.

2. The Second big question is :

http://www.vectorjunky.com/gallery/k/Kids-Next-Door-009.jpg

•How am I going to manage studentsto maximize learning?

-Only actively engaged students learn.

•Tough question, because whenever possible every student should be part of the action.

BUT!

“Actively engaged” must be carefully guided.

•What can the teacher do to involve all students in the lab or activity and still maintain a somewhat controlled environment for learning?

•Cooperative grouping of some sort is the solution.

Cooperative grouping:

The best kind cooperative grouping depends on whether the students are doing a lab or an activity. http://www.learnnc.org

First, cooperative grouping for labs, should involve rotating standard job assignments. For this I suggest:

• Divide your students into groups of three or four.• Assign each student a particular job.

• Rotate the jobs either by the day or week.•Each job must have specific duties.

Four jobs I recommend:

1. Principal Investigator or CEO2. Time Manager3. Reporter4. Materials Gatherer

Principal Investigator or CEO:

2. Assigns each member at least one of the tasks needed to complete the lab procedure.

1. Reads instruction for doing the lab aloud to the group.

3. Assigns tasks fairly by moving from member to member in a circle.

And everybody gets a turn at being the “boss”.

The person in charge is not a dictator

Time Manager

1. Watches the clock to make sure the group is completing the lab on time.2. Reminds people to keep on track to do the task assigned to them.

Reporter1. Reports the findings of the group.

2. Takes the materials out of the lab tray when needed.

3. Returns the material to the designated area.

4. Is the only team member allowed to be away from team table.

Important.

Materials Gatherer1. Picks up the materials needed for the

lab.

•Some people suggest that the Time Keeper position should be replaced by a position called the Recorder.

•In my experience in order to keep all the students involved everyone needs to be recording observations and/or data being collected.

• Assigning grades for job performance during labs could be a somewhat of a conundrum.

•One solution might be to prepare a Rubric showing check off squares for job description performance factors for each student. •You would check appropriate blocks while making your rounds during the lab.

• Permanently post the job titles with a description of duties in the classroom.

• To introduce students to these jobs, your first lab should be one specifically designed to allow students to practice doing the jobs. I have a favorite lab for this purpose that we will talk about later in this slide show.

•Next, we will think about assigning jobs or cooperative groups for activities (vs. labs). This is less straightforward.

•Don’t be afraid to change your procedures in midstream.

•For each activity you will have to look at the requirements and see what works.

1. Scaled difference between the planets using toilet paper.

•My general recommendation is to give as many students as you can an active role or task. •Let’s look at an activity where task assignments could vary depending on what you want to emphasize.

-Using balls to visualize the relative size of planets.

Have one group of students line up in the correct order of the planets holding the planet cards.

Give each student in the second group a ball whose size represents one of the planets.

Students in the second group are to find the planetcard that best matches the ball he or she is carrying.

How should I manage the materials.3. The third important question is:

• I like to use tubs—one tub per group which contains all the materials needed for the lab or activity.• Others place all the materials needed for the lab in the middle each group’s table.

Important—make sure before the day starts you have laid out all the materials each group needs for that lab.

4. The fourth question is :What auditory signal shall I use to tell the students that I need their attention?

• Hand clapping signals

• A bell

•There are other schemes for this job, select what works for your class.

• Students hands over head

5. The fifth question is :

•Some of the ideas you will be presenting are difficult for young minds, don’t expect that your students will always master a concept after doing a lab or activity.

What to do if the students don’t master a concept after the lab or activity?

•Follow up activities will usually be needed to solidify and reinforce the concepts your are teaching.

•Sponges and paper and pencil exercises will be needed to transfer concepts to pictures, and then to words.

•After the ball activity on planet size, a follow up exercise might have students redraw each of the planets in a more correct relative size.

• It is important to transfer concepts to pictures (drawn by the students where ever possible) and then to words.

•Second, their understanding ofthese concepts must be demonstratedon tests using pictures and words.

•First, because students need to be able to tie what they saw or did in a lab to some connection in their heads.

6. The sixth question is :

What do I need to do to make this lab or activity safe for the students?

• materials

• movement and behavior of students

Before the lab starts and before the students have access to the materials:

1. Discuss purpose of lab.2. Model important parts of the

procedure.3. Have the Principal Investigator read

aloud to the members of his group Lab Sheet outlining the procedures to be followed.

4. Have the Principal Investigator assign tasks in the procedure to the members of the group.

To teach students about team member jobs, I use this “magic formula lab” as the first lab done by each class. It is a lab where students try to mix colored water to match a color made by the teacher. They must keep data of their attempts (number of drops of each color), and when they do get it right, the teacher dumps their product and asks the team to reproduce that color using their data.

Purpose: To learn lab jobs for team members.

Materials: test tube rack, 6 test tubes: one with the “mystery solution” provided by the teacher, one with a solution of red food coloring, one with a solution of blue food coloring, one with a solution of green food coloring, one with a solution of yellow food coloring and one empty test tube, one 100mL beaker of water, a container to dump out mixture made on each trial, one eye dropper, goggles.

(This lab sheet would be provided for each group or team).

Procedure:1. As a group, closely observe the mystery

solution.2. As a group, decide how many drops of each

color you think it will be needed to create the mystery mixture.

3. Each member should record under Trial 1, on the data chart, the number of drops of each color that the group predicted it would take to create the mystery solution.

4. Pick up your empty test tube and put the decided number of drops of each color in that test tube.

5. Swirl the test tube gently to mix the drops.6. As a group, observe the mixture you have

created, hold it up beside the mystery solution and compare colors.

7. The members of the group should discuss how the solution made on that trial does or does not match the color of the mystery solution, example, just right, too red, too light, too purple. Record that conclusion on your data table.

8. As a group, decide how many drops of each of the colored solutions, you should use for Trial 2. Record that information in your data chart.

9. Pour out the mixture your group made on Trial 1 into the waste container.

10.Repeat steps 4-7 for Trial 2. 11.Then repeat all steps for Trial 3, Trial 4, etc.

until you match the magic formula or your teacher tells you time is up.

12.At the end of the lab, the Reporter in your group will have an opportunity to tell the whole group what you discovered.

Number of red drops

Number of bluedrops

Number of greendrops

Number of yellowdrops

Our solution on this trial was: (too dark, too light, just right)

Trial 1Trial 2Trial 3Trial 4Trial 5

Data Chart for predicted number of drops

• Don’t give up!

•Have a backup lesson (perhaps a reading assignment) ready so that you can abandon or make changes to the lab or activity if you must.

• Some groups are more difficult than others.

After that lab both teacher and students will have a better feel for doing labs.And it may be time for a little philosophy .

•After you have selected the right lab or activity to support one of your learning objectives, be aware that the students aren’t necessarily ready to do it.

•This is the time for some heavy duty thinking about the lab and about your students.

•Let’s walk through an example of how to analyze a lab or an activity to ensure that when students do the lab they will develop an understanding of the concept(s) being taught.

•Learning without a solid foundation, like a house built on sand, will eventually collapse.

Your students need to be taught all of their learning objectives, but let’s say for this time block you decide to focus on the following requirement:

“The student will be able to identify changes that can occur in the physical properties of ingredients such as dissolving sugar in water.”

You select a lab that touches on these ideas:

•The lab: Have the students investigate which substances dissolve in water and which ones do not and observe which physical properties of these substances are maintained and which change.

Now that you have selected the right lab to support the learning objective(s), ask yourself: What specific background knowledge do the students need for this lab?

Knowing your students, you decide that there are concepts (shown in red) that may not be understood by everyone.

•The lab: Have the students investigate which in water and which ones do not and observe which of these substances are maintained and which change.

substances dissolve

physical properties

So, before charging into this lab, ask yourself “what concepts do I need to review (or teach) to make sure students are ready for this lab?”

•Let’s take our red letter words for openers: “substances”•In our world we have objects and we have substances.

•objects are made of substances. erasers are made of

rubber foil is made of

aluminum credit cards are made of plastic

•substances have physical properties.

objectserasers

foilcredit cards

substances.rubberaluminumplastic

•physical properties are characteristics of a substance that can be observed with our five senses and measured or even changed (bent, cut, etc.) without changing the substance itself.

•Let’s take the substance sugar for example?

•Here the substance sugar is formed into five objects the shape of cubes.

•It has all of sugar’s physical properties including these:

-White -dissolves in water-tastes sweet

And here, we have sugar in granular form.

•It still has all of sugar’s physical properties whichinclude these:

-White -dissolves in water-tastes sweet

•As can be seen here, shape and size are not physical properties of substances.

And here, we could have sugar in water or we could have just water.

What physical property of sugar could we use to find out?

Color?Dissolves in water?Taste?

•Our next red letter word was dissolving, what does that mean?

•Dissolving means that molecules of one substance (a solute) mix evenly with the molecules of a liquid substance (solvent) such as water.

•Here we see that sugar, salt and sand have each been stirred into water. The molecules of sugar and salt mixed evenly but the sand did not.

Dissolved

molecules

Not dissolvedDissolved

•Uh-oh, another word pops up that will be needed to understand the lab, molecule, better deal with that onetoo.

•A molecule is the smallest piece of a compound.

•The substances we talk about (sugar, salt) are compounds, so roughly speaking molecules are the smallest pieces of our substances.

•Molecules are way too small to be seen. But if they were as big as BB’s,molecules in the three states of matter might appear something like this.

Solid Liquid Gas

•If one could cut a sugar cube in half, then cut the half in half, and kept on doing that until arriving at the smallest piece that has the properties of sugar, that would be a molecule. •Of course, one could not keep cutting a sugar cube that far, the last few thousand cuts would be of something much too small to see.

•But if we could, we would reach the point where one more cut and it would no longer be a molecule of sugar, but the atoms that, put together in a special way, make up sugar molecules.

•When we stir a spoon of sugar into a beaker of water, the molecules of sugar (let’s pretend that they are purple) mix evenly with the molecules of water (let’s color them blue).

•When dissolved, the sugarmolecules are not visible andthe solution is clear. • Sugar dissolves in water.

•When we stir a spoon of sand into a beaker of water, the grains of sand (let’s pretend that they are red) do not mix evenly with the molecules of water (still blue), instead they fall to the bottom.

•When settled, the grains of sand are still visible in the bottom of the beaker.• Sand does not dissolve in water.

• Now, with some understanding of the vocabulary needed for our experiment we are ready to teach our learning objective:• “What are some changes that can occur in the physical properties of ingredients such as dissolving sugar in water?”

• We know that substances have physical properties, and that some of these properties can change when the substance is dissolved.

• Students can see that sugar is white before it is placed in the water. Then it disappears.

• But how will they know that the sugar is still there?

• Of course we are going to let them taste it. I use a pipette to put a tiny squirt into the mouths of any student who wants to see for sure.

• For a more lasting bit of proof, we canlet the water evaporate leaving the sugar residue behind.

• For an ongoing demonstration for the next week, heat the water and dump in all the sugar you an get to dissolve. • Point out that after a certain amount,no more sugar will dissolve. The rest falls to the bottom.• You might mention at that point the sugar water solution is holding all the sugar that it can, and use the word saturated.

•Then suspend a string into the water and in about a week the sugar will reform on the string.

•By then, students really begin to get the idea that:

•substances have physical properties.

•some substances dissolve in water.

•substances that dissolve lose some of their physical properties

•Now, the students are ready to do the lab which could be something like this:

•Provide each team with six small beakers of water and small containers of six substances to test; salt, sand, sugar, cornstarch, Epsom salts and small pieces of styrofoam.

•Prepare an instruction sheet with steps students are to follow.

•On a data chart, list in two columns, substances that do and substances that do not dissolve in water. Show properties lost or kept for those that did dissolve.

•After team reports, the teacher should summarize with a statement of what students should have learned: •Solutions are mixtures in which the dissolved substance (like salt or sugar) loses most of its physical properties—it seems to disappear but really it breaks down into molecules and those molecules mix evenly with the water molecules.

Some general thoughts on doing labs with elementary students:

•For some lessons, a teacher demonstration may be more productive than a lab.

•When doing labs or activities, watch the clock, pacing is very important.

•You must know your Learning Objectives, but it is also important to know those of the following grade level to be sure you are providing the foundation for those overall concepts.

•When selecting and when doing your labs, look for concepts previously taught that can be reviewed or reinforced in the lab or activity students are presently doing.

Following are some examples:

•When you teach “describe the life cycle of plants”

-Review “parts of plants and their functions”

•When you teach “Identify the significance of the water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle”.

a. –Review “changes in states of matter caused by addition or reduction of heat”

b. –Review “identify the Sun as the major source of energy for the Earth and understand its role in the growth of plants, in the creation of winds, and in the water cycle”

•When you “test the properties of soil, including texture, capacity to retainwater, and ability to support life.”

-Review all Learning Objectives of your grade level to do with the scientific method.

•To review, even though our lab and activity selections will be based on several things, student readiness, classroom management, etc. they must be specifically focused on teaching Learning Objectives of your grade level. •Your success will be very much affected by how familiar you are with these objectives and how well your teaching focuses on them.

•Even with the right focus, good organization and appropriate activities, student learning will ultimately depend on the students being thoroughly engaged.

•Even with the right focus, good organization and appropriate activities, student learning will ultimately depend on the students being thoroughly engaged. on the students being thoroughly engaged.

Remember doing a lab or an activity may bring you agony

Boopsie.daisy @flickr.com

or ecstasy

but real learning almost always takes place.

because activities and labs are sometimes

ORGANIZED CHAOS

Remember doing a lab or an activity may bring you agony or ecstasy......