Unit 4: Mini-Course Assessment-Identify the Better Hands-On Lesson
Thomas Parker: Using Hands-On Activities in Science
UNIT OBJECTIVE
5.0 Participants will be able to rate and critique two different hands-on activities and choose the best one to use in a lesson.(Bloom's level 4)
5.1 Recall what constitutes a successful hands-on activity(enabling, to use in your critique).
What to do for this unit
For this unit, I would like you to rate the following two hands-on lessons. I have personally used both of these activities in my Chemistry classes. I would like you to predict, using what you have learned in this mini course, which lesson you think is the better hands-on lesson. This can be done so in the following discussion space: Discussion page
Lesson #1: SMORE STOICHIOMETRY
Stoichiometry, being a fairly new term to chemistry students, the teacher feels it is a good idea to try to relate this analogously to something students know: a smore. A simple creation of marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers, students can use this as a chemical reaction. For the last week, students have performed mole conversions with little to no context for the operation. The lesson goes something like this: a bell ringer question is on the board "How is a smore made?". After a class discussion, the general consensus is 1 marshmallow slightly roasted, with 3 pips(the mini bars on a full bar) of chocolate and 1 graham cracker broken in half. Now the teacher asks the students to put these ingredients into a chemical reaction. The answers vary, but the reaction of 1M + 3C +1G --> 1Smore is agreed upon. From here, the teacher asks, while pointing to their ingredients, "is this enough for everybody to make a smore?". The students look at the recipe and now the work begins. The following link takes you to the handout for the hands-on activity: File:Smoreslab.pdf
Lesson #2: POPTOP LAB-CHEMICAL REACTIONS
Chemical reactions, one of the most common hands-on activities in the Chemistry curriculum. The following lesson was designed to give the students a hands-on experience dealing with the rate of reaction for Alka-Seltzer tablets and water. The day before this lesson, students were introduced to the idea that there are certain things that can be done to speed up a chemical reaction, but not specifically what they are. This lesson is a pseudo guided inquiry lesson into that idea. This hands-on lesson will serve as their first contact to working with chemical reactions and how to speed them up. The following link takes you to the hands on activity: File:Poptoplab.pdf
course home page
The post-course journal prompt is on the course home page.