Clark University 11/21/2016

Learning Activity Plan

Chemistry, Mrs. Phillips

  1. Content: Conservation of Mass

Today we will be continuing our discussion on the law of conservation of mass, and students will be working on putting together their lab reports. We will review the expectations for a lab report, including the sections, formatting, and style of writing that are typical of a lab report, and students will work in their groups to ensure that they each have all of the data required to complete the lab individually.

  1. Learning Goals:
  2. SWBAT explain their application of the law of conservation of mass and analyze their data scientifically.
  3. SWBAT analyze their data to prove or disprove the law of conservation of mass and their hypothesis for their experiment.
  4. SWBAT explain and account for any difference in mass (error), interpret their results, and draw conclusions from them.
  1. Rationale:

This lesson will provide students with evenmore experience withone of the three most fundamental laws of chemistry – the law of conservation of mass. Students will be required to use their knowledge of the law of conservation of mass to evaluate the results of the previous day’s experiment to prove that the law of conservation of mass is true. This is a much more effective means of teaching students about the law of conservation of mass than by simply providing diagrams or videos, as the concept of gas having “no mass” is a very common misconception in chemistry, and so will be addressed in a hands-on manner to ensure students do not walk away with this misconception. This also gives students practice with writing a lab report, a real life science skill.

  1. Assessment:

The final assessment for this topic will be a unit exam focusing on electron configuration, radioactivity, and laws (law of conservation of mass, law of multiple proportions, and the law of definite proportions). The assessment for this lesson will be in the form of a lab report based off of the experiment students designed to prove that mass is conserved in reactions. Students will be required to hand in one lab report per person, and will be given time in class today to draw conclusions and perform calculations with their group members before writing their lab reports. Lab reports will be due the following Tuesday.

  1. Personalization and Equity:

The use of predetermined groups will ensure that all students have taken part in designing and carrying out their experiment and as such, all students will have a deeper understanding of the experiment and its connection to the law of conservation of mass. The groups will also benefit students who are collaborative thinkers, while the individual writing of the lab reports will allow students to express their own individual thinking. The use of group discussions and group calculations will give students the opportunity to work collaboratively to talk through their ideas and thought processes while coming to conclusions for their lab reports. Finally, the use of heterogeneous groupings will be of great benefit to all participants, giving struggling students access to those who can help them and giving high achieving students the opportunity to become “teachers” and therefore master the material themselves. Brandon will receive a shorter lab report to follow to make sure he is working with the most important information and eliminating some of the “fluff” information to make the assignment more accessible to him.

  1. Activity Description and Agenda:
  2. Agenda

Time / Teacher: / Students: / Rationale:
0:00 – 0:05 / Teacher will direct students to write down three things they learned from their experiment yesterday, and turn and share with a partner. This will then transition into a whole group discussion. / Students will enter and take out their notebooks, writing down three things they learned from the previous week’s experiment. Students will then share with a partner, then the class. / This will help transition students into working on the lab report.
0:05 – 0:15 / Teacher will hand out lab report rubrics and briefly remind students of the expectations for the lab report: All sections and their content, writing style, formulas, calculations, etc. Teacher will then start a discussion on what students believe should be included in the introduction to ensure all students are on the same page. / Students will take notes on lab report expectations and make notes on what is expected in the introduction. / This will make sure all students have a clear understanding of the lab report requirements before beginning.
0:15 – 0:55 / Teacher will direct students to get into their groups and begin working on their lab reports, performing all of the required calculations, listing their materials and procedures, and drawing conclusions as a group before leaving for the day. / Students will get into their groups and begin working on their lab reports, asking questions as needed. / This willhelp students to get their thoughts in order before they begin writing their lab reports in full this weekend.
0:55 – 0:60 / Teacher willdraw students attention to the front of the room for a discussion on sources of error in this lab - why might the mass have been slightly different? What possible sources of error could have occurred? Does this mean conservation of mass was not proven? Teacher will inform students that the lab reports will be due on Tuesday. / Students will discuss sources of error to include in their lab reports. / This will reinforce the idea of error in experiments and brings the discussion back to whether or not conservation of mass was proven through the experiment.

Homework:Work on Lab Report – due Tuesday.

  1. Challenges:

For this activity, I anticipate there may be some problems with students focusing on writing the lab report and perhaps letting their group mates do all the work, and so I have made individual lab reports a requirement and will be circulating the room while students work on the lab reports to keep groups on task and answer any questions that they may have. I have also ensured that the groups are formed heterogeneously with a high achiever in each group so that the students who are struggling will have a resource within their group to turn to as they develop their lab reports.

  1. Frameworks:

2.3 Interpret and apply the laws of conservation of mass, constant composition (definite proportions), and multiple proportions.

SIS1. Make observations, raise questions, and formulate hypotheses.

SIS2. Design and conduct scientific investigations.

SIS3. Analyze and interpret results of scientific investigations.

SIS4. Communicate and apply the results of scientific investigations.

  1. Reflection:

For this lesson, we spent the first half of the period going over lab report expectations and discussing the rubric that students would need to follow to be successful in this lab report. Students were already familiar with this lab report rubric, as it is a school-wide rubric that they had used earlier this year and in prior lessons in biology, as well. Even so – I wanted to be certain that expectations were clear for the students, as during their first lab write up of the year before I took over these classes, a large number of them simply ignored the lab report requirement and accepted a zero instead. To try and encourage and support students in this endeavor, I came prepared with a lab write-up checklist to help them organize their thoughts (in addition to the rubric), and also provided a select few of my IEP and 504 students with an alternative write up assignment so as not to overwhelm them with the full scale write up.

Students worked productively throughout the period, sharing data with one another and interpreting their results with their group mates and myself, as needed. When it came time for the lab report to be turned in, I was pleased to see that only six students did not complete the lab report for this activity – which, although it was not an ideal one-hundred percent turn in, was a significant improvement and a small victory for many of the students who had not completed a lab report before. I will continue to work on improving the turn-in rate on my next lab experiment with these classes through different strategies and teaching techniques. However, I was very satisfied with the level of understanding students came away from this experiment with, as it was evident in their lab reports that they truly understood the law of conservation of mass on a deeper level than they would have by simply reading about it from their textbooks.