If you are reading this, you are likely a science teacher. And as a science teacher, you have felt the lump rise in your throat as you watch your lab crumble into disarray and chaos. You have seen the class period end 20 minutes too early. You have seen long lines at the bottleneck. In this post, I will offer a handful of simple ways to make lab day be just a bit more efficient.
Predict the bottleneck. Just by recognizing the process in the lab that will cause the largest wait times will allow you to start to problem solve before there is a line out the door. Take a minute and see if there is a "No Duh" solution for eliminating the bottleneck.
Assign measuring order. When I am doing a chemistry lab that requires more than one measurement, I will split up the room and specify what they have to measure first. An example would be all the groups on the left have to measure copper (II) sulfate first while all the right have to measure zinc first.
Assign group roles. If each person in the group knows what they have to set up, they will be more efficient and make less mistakes. There are any number of ways to organize the students. Put them in order by birthday. Closest to January 1 gathers glassware, next birthday measures the volume of hydrochloric acid, next birthday weighs the zinc metal. Since each job is specified, they don't have to talk and decide and no job is left undone.
Split aqueous solutions into more than one container. This is definitely a "no duh" hack, but I have found myself ignoring this one. Make 1,000 mL of stock solution, label 4 250-mL beakers and split it up. The movement around the class to get materials decreases as does the time waiting for someone else to measure.
Move data analysis to tomorrow. I have found that all-to-often I would push the students through a lab with minimal time at the end for them to calculate their final answers. So what did I do? I would hurry them, not explain well, and then tell them to finish at home, So what did they do? They felt hurried, didn't understand, and then didn't even try at home. If they know that they are only responsible for collecting data, then tomorrow they can tabulate, calculate, and ask questions, the understanding will increase.
Make data public. Often times I will have the students (if they have enough time to calculate appropriately) put their data on the white board as they complete it. This does a number of things; it lets your eyes move off the groups that are already done and just cleaning up, it helps you pace in the next period because you saw how fast the data was produced, it creates a sense of ownership and competition in the lab. It also gives you a heads up if there are errors being produced by multiple groups. You can stop them at that point and make the corrections rather than waiting until tomorrow when everyone has done it wrong.
Have consistent homes for items. If the materials for your labs are always found in the same place, the students will spend less time wandering around and asking. It doesn't have to be crazy with cool little typed labels for everything, it just has to be the same. The students in my lab know how to get Bunsen burners. They know how to get a stirring rod. They know where the scales are kept. They know that I will have the aqueous chemicals on a cart that I roll out from the prep room. I also give them permission at the beginning of the year to access certain places without my permission. They don't have to ask to get in the drawer of tongs. They don't have to ask to grab a stirring rod. Keep these items in publicly accessible locations and give the students permission to be efficient.
Have lab handouts ready early. I am definitely preaching to the choir on this one. It is so dumb! Hand out the lab instructions the day before and they will have a better idea of what to do on lab day! Have them highlight the places in the instructions where they have to collect data. Then they know when to measure. They know when to get in line for the scale.
Don't read all the instructions verbatim. If you read it, they will nod along with you. And then promptly forget what you said, and have to re-read it anyway. Use your explanation time to highlight major skills, dangerous items, or key measurements. They can read the simple steps in between.
Draw a lab map. This is something that I have been stressing more in the past few years. During my summary of the lab instructions, I will draw in large, basic shapes, how to do the lab. That way they have brief set of visual cues for what to do next. Combined with the ability to effectively summarize only the main points of the lab, you can communicate the totality of the lab better in a picture. See an example below (and yes, that is how bad of an artist I am, and yes that is really my handwriting, and yes I do feel sorry for my students).
I hope that these ten simple steps will improve your efficiency in the lab. Make sure to keep your growth mindset and really analyze why you do what you do in the lab. Your students will thank you for it.
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