We had the General Chemistry students take a Safety & Equipment Quiz. They must pass it in order to participate in the labs. Students generally thought this was a fair deal. The quiz had a portion where they identified some lab equipment. We all switched it up for each of the blocks so that no one block got the same order of equipment as another block.
Some of the commonly mistaken ones were: crucible and cover, Erlenmeyer flask, graduated cylinder, and ring stand. I can understand why the ring stand was missed. When we set up the practical, I had the ring clamp attached to the ring stand. Not quite sure what the misconcepction is with the graduated cylinder. We had it on the Exit Ticket and it was one of the items that I thoroughly covered in the review. The other teachers and I have some disagreements whether or not to award full points for flask vs Erlenmeyer flask. I argue that we didn’t have a volumetric flask to compare–so not sure if we need to be picky about it. They felt strongly about being specific because this particular flask is common in the lab. I see both sides of it.
I really liked how we came up with the definition of matter. The students were to decide which items on the list were matter and which were not. They had to decide on items like: chair, air, mist from a perfume, joy, sun, thought, plasma, fire. For the common items, students found it really easy to decide if it was matter. Some of their definitions included “things you can feel.” When I argued that love can be felt, students had to review their definition and rules for what is matter. Eventually, they agreed that matter needs to take up space AND matter is made up of stuff. We gave them the definitions for mass and volume to give them language for their previous definitions.
One of the blocks decided that matter was a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. When I asked what makes something a “solid”–they said it was something that was physical and cannot move. I asked if Ms. Medrano is a solid–they said yes. I asked if Ms. Medrano can move as I was walking around. Then they changed their definition to where particles were packed together and those are the ones that don’t move. I asked what the particles are…they said atoms. I asked what atoms were, and they were unable to define it. This means that they knew words and definitions, but didn’t really innately know them. This is where I think Modeling Instruction has its strength. The learning activities truly allows students to own their learning and their knowledge attaining.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 