Candice Seawright Teaching Science to Children Mrs.

McClary April 20, 2014 Laboratory Safety I had the opportunity to observe a hands-on science experiment in Mr. Burgess 5th grade classroom. The students had to conduct an experiment with mixtures and solutions, solvents, and solutes. They had to add different substances into water and decided whether or not the substance in the beaker held a mixture or solution. Before students conducted their experiment in the school science laboratory, Mr. Burgess reviewed with the students their safety contract. To begin the review, he asks the students what they are not supposed to do while in the laboratory. Students are allowed to answer with the correct responses such as they are not allowed to run around the science laboratory, they are not allowed to hit each other, and they are not allowed to eat or drink anything in the laboratory. While students are saying these rules to the class, he is repeating them out loud to make sure students understand the rules. If the students do not say everything they are not supposed to do, Mr. Burgess will state them to the class. Once the students have gone over what they are not to do while in the science laboratory, they discuss what they should do in lab while participating in an investigation. These rules include students handling all equipment, material and supplies as Mr. Burgess says to. If needed, students will wear their goggles and apron the appropriate way and will not take them off until they are told to. Another rules is to report any accident that may have happened during the experiment to the teacher, which is Mr. Burgess. Again, like the rules you should not do, Mr. Burgess repeats all

the rules stated and restates the students may have missed. Students know these rules from the Student Safety contract every student has to read, take home, get signed by their parents and return to school Once students were ready to go into the lab, they would line up at the door in the classroom. They had to make sure they were quiet to proceed to the hallway. Since the classrooms are pretty close together in the hallways, students needed to be quite to make sure they were not disturbing the other classes in the building and since the science lab is not far at all from Mr. Burgess room, they did not have to remain quiet or walk for too long. After they leave the classroom, they line up at the door of the lab in the hallways. Mr. Burgess is usually by the door and will assign groups as the students walk in. This means that students were assigned their groups as they walked in. Since Mr. Burgess knows so much about his students, he already knows who can and cannot work together in a group thus, making it easier to assign cooperative work groups. Once the students entered into the lab, Mr. Burgess explained the procedure to the students step by step. Also he made sure that the students read the procedure together with him and made sure to ask the students if they had any questions about what they were to do. On that particular day, students seemed to behave pretty well. Besides spills from the water every now and then and a few arguments from the boys in the group, the students were behaved better than I expected them too. Mr. Burgess made sure that he was constantly monitoring what each group was doing. This seemed to reduce any confusion and mishaps that may have happened during this activity. Students had to participate in an activity that helped them distinguish between a mixture and a solution. The objectives of lesson were that students would be able to know what a mixture and solution is and how to distinguish between the two. The materials involved in the activity

were water, beakers, sand, salt and vegetable oil and spoons. Students were to take the beaker filled with water (all three beakers containing the same amount) and stir in each ingredient (sand, salt and vegetable oil) and decided whether or not each beaker contain a mixture or solution while answering analysis questions during the experiment. On the activity worksheet, students had to answer which material was the solvent, solute and the solution. Even though I did not get to see the entire lesson, I believe this activity was definitely one the students enjoyed because they got to see different mixtures hands on and understand them better. I enjoyed the lesson myself because students were learning as they experimented. I am pretty sure most students did not even realize that they were learning about mixtures and solutions. This is what makes hands on activities a lot more efficient than direct teaching, students will remember what they did in a science experiment before they remember what they were taught directly. Overall, I think the lab activity was very effective.