Unit 1 Reflections: Mass and Change Lab

One of the most frustrating things for me at the moment is that my cell phone is not letting me email or text pictures from my gallery.  My gmail app keeps crashing and my gallery keeps crashing about 7 times out of 10.  Not only is this irritating for blogging, but I also take tons of pictures of things on the whiteboards for absent students or when we are cut short on time.  But I digress...

Our first lab on Mass and Change was supposed to be Wednesday.  Wednesday ended up being a 1/2 day due to an early dismissal for inclement weather, we were on a modified schedule with only 3 of the 4 blocks meeting for shortened class periods.  Thursday we were closed for inclement weather.  With this being our first lab with white boarding, we are muddling through it at a painstakingly slow pace.

On Wednesday/Friday, students completed the Mass and Change Lab.  Students had to observe the relationship between mass and change at 6 different lab stations:  pulling apart steel wool, melting ice, forming a precipitate, burning steel wool, dissolving sugar, and dissolving Alka-Seltzer.  Some highlights:

I wanted to do this lab more "open ended," with students taking notes on some pre-lab instructions, then completing the procedure themselves.  With the lost days and all, I just ended up printing up a simple procedure to place at each lab station.  That was probably a good idea, since this was a great introductory lab to assess students' basic lab skills.  The students worked very well in the lab.  I was impressed with their behavior.  But the majority of their lab skills are extraordinarily low, not surprisingly.  On a side note, I was really proud of some of my former biology students from last year, who seemed noticeably more capable and confident in a laboratory setting than the others.  This is the first year I've had repeat students from biology to chemistry.  It's nice to think they learned something.  I've always been a big believer of spending as much time in the lab as possible in science classes.

The class data was... well... interesting:

I then assigned each lab group 1-2 stations to white board the results verbally, mathematically, diagramatically, and graphically with a histogram.  I wanted to a do a short lesson on histograms before this lab-- that is what got cut thanks to the snow day.  We learned about histograms on the fly, and it was not very pretty.  Hopefully they will get more confident as the year progresses.

This is one class's collection of white boards for the 6 stations (I would call this class my brightest thus far):

Some of the issues:  the data interpretation/conclusion forming skills were so-so.  I had a lot of groups with very weak verbal explanations.  Many just explained the procedure.  With mathematical expression, they really struggled.  Most students just gave me a subtraction problem for change in mass.  I kept pushing for an algebraic equation.  A very small handful of students could fathom that.  Particles are throwing them for a big loop.  They are really struggling with the concept at this point.  I don't know how much I should force it right now-- will they have a light bulb moment if I just keep asking the question?  Or do I need to nip this in the butt now and do a review session on matter and particles?  I'm not sure...

In two of my classes, we got through the consensus board meeting for a model of mass:

Clearly one is much more detailed than the other.

Tomorrow, we will complete Worksheet 1 and then move on to volume...

I'll admit, I'm worried about the chemistry modeling curriculum and my current group of students at this moment in time.  Many don't seem to handle "open ended" or "abstract" well at all.  They zone out, then won't try (especially my 4th block).  And their baseline skills seem loooooow-- lower than average.