I know you want to hear about the full year chemistry lab book. And I hate when recipe blogs do this, but here’s my story. (It’s kind of relevant, I promise.) I first started teaching chemistry from an old art classroom with no supplies. Like seriously, I had three outlets: one for my computer, one in a closet and one right by the classroom door underneath a 10 inch wide shelf. I plugged in an oil diffuser to repel the mice.
So teaching chemistry was really tough… And knowing that I had over 150 kids to teach and that they were going to be taking a state final exam, I made it happen. Instead of relying on the lab procedure for rigor, I more so relied on the quality of their writing.
Here’s my primary example. Of course there were no Bunsen burners or supplies. When I was teaching hydrates, I would have liked to have done a dehydration of copper (II) sulfate pentahydrate. It’s great because while it’s dehydrating, you also get a color change (which helps the newbie chemists to understand what’s going on). Since that was off the table, we instead used bubble gum.
The kids chewed the gum to remove sugar, taking the mass before and after. They do the EXACT SAME calculations! They even do a percent error analysis using the nutritional facts on the bubble gum package. And seriously, I love this lab for the in depth (not so easy) error analysis!
As those years went on, I found more and more ways to get around not having a lab. And when I changed schools and I actually did have all the materials I needed, I CONTINUED to use these “chemical free” lab activities. Why? Well, they’re really great!
So great that I’ve put them all together and listed 41 labs in a book available for purchase as a full year chemistry lab book.
There’s 41 lab activities
Yes! That’s right, there’s 41 lab activities in this full year chemistry lab book. Considering most high schools run about 36 weeks out of the year, this is pretty good. You can skip five labs that you just don’t vibe with and STILL do one a week!
There’s a least one lab activity for each of my fifteen units in my chemistry course. Not sure what the 15 units are? Check out this free chemistry curriculum outline. The more meaty units, like measurement, atomic theory and periodic table have more labs than redox. But there’s at least one for each!
They are mostly “chemical free”
Like I said, I wrote most of these before I had a real chemistry lab. So even though we all know that EVERYTHING is a chemical, these labs are pretty close to chemical free. I mean, you could even call this a kitchen chemistry lab book because most of these could be done in your own kitchen! Instead of using universal indicator (which is pretty toxic and definitely flammable) the book calls for cabbage juice as an acid base indicator. And I’ll tell you, it’s one of my favorites.
The chemicals that you will need are kind of your everyday chemicals – nothing fancy. And the lab book requires very small quantities of the chemicals. A $3 bottle of vinegar lasted me about three years. This should be something that YOUR SCHOOL can easily purchase for you. Most schools have some type of budget that you can spend. You’ll probably have to fill out an obscene amount of paperwork, but you can get it paid for. Just make sure to check the reimbursement rule BEFORE you spend your own money. (Unless you’re willing to part with it – been there, done that.) This does leave the bulk of whatever budget you do have for cooler and more expensive things. Like a centrifuge, or distillation set up *heart eyes.*
It’s rigorous
Every administrator’s favorite word… But for real, this lab book requires a lot of in depth writing and explaining for EVERY lab. Every single lab is going to require the students to write a conclusion paragraph. In it, they’ll explain what they did, how the did it, why they did it, how it turned out and what they’d do differently next time. Many of the labs have some post-lab questions to help them to get in the mindset to write these conclusions.
It’s got a great writing resource
When I was relying on the rigor of the writing to teach my students, I had to make sure they were writing like scientists. I developed a document, How To Write a Chemistry Lab Report to help the kids write well. It outlines what each section of a lab report should look like and where it should go. But the best part is that it has SENTENCE STARTERS. I know that sounds pretty juvenile for chemistry students… but writing scientifically is so different from writing in English or history class. “Rigor” means it’s a brain workout. Not that it’s difficult. There’s a teeny weenie difference.
You can differentiate
Have kids that need some help? Assign JUST post-lab questions instead of the whole conclusion. Allow them to write conclusions in small groups. Or give them the “conclusion form.” It’s effectively the same as the sentence starters for the conclusion paragraph with one difference. It has the kids write as if they were answering questions. It’s a much smaller task to answer 8 question than to write an 8 sentence paragraph. The baby steps are what helps. Plus you can trim a few of those prompts to shorten the task if needed.
You can bind it as a book or print individually
There’s a document of numbered pages for book people. My high school chemistry teacher printed a class set of her full year chemistry lab books, and we wrote in composition books. I prefer to print out the unnumbered pages and have students write directly on that. For help on deciding what works best for you, read this post.
There’s multiple covers
This one might be a little silly – maybe not. Depends on your level of *extra.* There’s six different covers so you can print covers for different classes. This can help you to sort them easily for grading, or storing them in your classroom.
There’s an answer key
This one is sort of obvious. Perhaps not… I will be honest, there are a few answers that read “answers will vary.” But I’ve either ripped a conclusion from one of my students or wrote one myself. For each lab! You can show an exemplar to your students to help the solidify chemistry concepts or increase the depth of their writing.
Google Sheets calculators
About half the labs include some kind of calculation. I know that you know what the right answers should be. If you’re anything like me, you’d say “that’s close enough” or “that’s off because of a rounding error.” But without checking it, you can’t REALLY know. So I’ve made a Google sheet that does all the calculations for you for any lab that will require math.
Where to Get it
This lab book is available for purchase in my Teaches Pay Teachers store or on my website. You can find the full table of contents there, along with the full list of materials you’d need for the lab book. Be sure to download the preview file because you can get a lab for free! Yes, my periodic table guessing game is included for free in the preview file! Finally, there are plenty of labs available on their own if you just need some specific things, or just want to give the full year chemistry lab book a trial run.
