2. Importance of Student Presentations
Motivation Understanding Preparation
Students don’t want Students understand In the real world,
to look bad in front of material at a deeper students will need to
their peers, level from explaining present information in
presentations it to others the business place,
motivate them to gives practice for
know their material business skills
3. Engaging Students
• Switch talkative students to passive roles so they don’t dominate the
lab group
• Put meaning behind the data
– Judge/courtroom results from video
– Use samples from students or the school so students are learning about their
environment
– Connect to student interests
• Offering rewards or “winning”
• Groups
– Keep groups small enough so everyone is working
– Time keeper and time limits push students
– Rotate roles, students look forward to different roles,
some more engaging than others
4. Making Labs Scientific Studies
• Give students a question to answer not a procedure to follow
• Make labs relevant to the student, have them determine the
concentration of bacteria on their hands or the pH of water in school
toilets
• Ask students open ended questions about the experiment so they can
lead themselves to the answer
• Be the “devil’s advocate”
– Point out ambiguities the students need to account for in their models
– Introduce alternate points of view
This theme applies the ideas of strong/weak acids, bases and salts to every day life. Several months are spent addressing these topics and this can be a weekly activity throughout all three units (strong acids/bases, weak acids/bases, and salts).
