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SOME TEACHING TIPS FOR TEACHERS WHO WANT TO
SPRUCE UP THEIR SCIENCE LESSONS

Prepare the Class
If you can find the time, try the experiment yourself, or just before doing the lab. The labs are not intended to teach a subject but to reinforce what has already been taught.

Make sure the kids read the experiment completely before they start. This can be done for homework or together in the class. It can either be done the day before so the ideas have a little time to percolate so, read about the topic in a textbook beforehand.

Spend some time beforehand discussing the lab, procedure, hypotheses, possible outcomes, and safety. One teacher has a team demonstrate the experiment, or at least how to set it up, before the class does it. Give this job to a different team for each experiment. I prefer to do without the demonstrations because, although they make things go more smoothly, I think the kids get more out of the experiments if they have to figure things out for themselves.

Equipment Logistics
Since I think it's important for the kids to get in the habit of thinking about what equipment they'll need, I prefer having all of the necessary equipment put out on a single table - the supply table. Then each team, in turn, comes to get their supplies. It's up to them to figure out what they need. An adult may sit by the supply table to protect the supplies and help minimize the chaos, but they should not tell the kids what is needed.

Preforming the Experiments
Should you give the kids a lab at a time or a booklet for the entire unit? Many teachers prefer to hand out the single experiments, especially if they don't plan on doing all of them. If you plan to do at least a majority of the experiments, seriously consider making a booklet for the unit. Then kids will be working out of Lab Notebook rather than recording their work on loose sheets of paper, a practice strictly avoided in the scientific world.

I prefer to have the kids work in pairs. Some of the experiments require two or three kids because extra hands are needed. A single child may do the rest but they'll miss the very important discussions and idea exchanges that happen with a partner. With three or more kids working together, someone ends up with nothing to do.

Selecting partners for science is no different than for any other activity. I suggest giving careful thought to partners since it is important that each child is actively involved. You'll have to find out what works best for your class: anywhere from a carefully planned pairing to drawing names out of a hat. You might change partners each time to give the kids a wider range of ideas and experience, or keep the same partners all the way through a unit for improved efficiency. If this is your first experience, I suggest drawing names out of a hat each time until you see how things go.

One teacher likes to have her first grade class stay together: they read a step and then perform it, read the next step and then perform it . . . Certainly in the older grades, the teams should progress at their own pace.

If the program is successful, the kids will want to try other things. I require that they first finish the lab as written and then go on as long as their experiment is relevant and safe. I encourage them to document and share their discoveries with the class.

Ask Parents to Help
Consider asking some parents to come in to help, either people you know or by sending home a general request for volunteers. Give them a copy of the experiment or the lab book and a copy of these instructions that emphasize the need to let the kids do the work. Parents are especially helpful in getting the materials ready beforehand and making sure everything gets repacked properly afterward.

Some teachers appreciate having extra adult's help oversee the actual experiments. One teacher would have one parent for each table of two teams if she could get the volunteers. Many teachers like having one extra adult to help keep an eye on things and clean up the inevitable messes. Some teachers prefer to go it alone. If the equipment is to be used by more than one teacher, I recommend at least having a parent to make sure the kit is kept in good order.

Wrap Up
It is very important to wrap up the experiment by sharing results, understanding differences, how what they saw relates to theory, interesting observations, etc. Some experiments lend themselves to tabulating the results for the entire class and doing a statistical analysis on them.

Since documenting your work is important to the scientific process, I encourage teachers to check the labs to be sure they are properly filled in. You're not looking for "right" answers, rather that hypotheses, observations and conclusions are clearly written.