Rethinking Labs

In this week's Learning Module I viewed a video featuring a science teacher who approached lab activities in a different way. The initial part of the activity that the teacher was using could be very beneficial in my classroom. instead of having the students read from a WRITTEN procedure and completing the steps, the teacher reviewed the steps AURALLY before the students began. The students were then responsible for writing their own procedure. This is the particular part that I was interested in. Having the students compose their own procedure has many benefits. Apart from the traditional lab procedure, this requires the student to put the procedure in their own words. In this process the student will have to understand what is happening in the investigation prior to composing a procedure. They will also be making use of many relevant vocabulary terms that may be slightly unfamiliar to them. This almost forces them to become accustomed to the unfamiliar words while teaching what they mean and how to use them. Following the development of a procedure the students in the video were free to come up with any question about the investigation that concerned them. A hypothesis was then created to further investigate the question. Having the students write down and manipulate the questions that they had could prove to be a very valuable vocabulary practice tool, as well as an engaging practice. In the future, I plan to amend my labs to reflect this sort of strategy.