What happens in a Co-op science class? The class runs 90 minutes, twice a week. Let’s begin with the first day of Chemistry. Why? The class sequence is pretty typical.
1. Usually, I begin with an overview, such as Day One, a slide deck, about two topics: Lab Safety and Lab Equipment. Everything in class revolves around this theme. The overview takes five to ten minutes.
2. Next is a safety video. My teens made one I use every year, which runs about 15 minutes. The video below is about eight minutes.
3. We spend a few minutes wrapping up lab safety, distribute student safety contracts, and take a quiz. We’ll see if we can identify all of the safety violations. The message is, ‘Don’t be a Nimrod during lab.’ There are consequences. Finally, we show everyone where the safety equipment is located, especially the fire extinguisher, first-aid kit, and sink. How long? 20-25 minutes.
4. Go over the names of all the lab equipment I can imagine using. Then we do a quick review and take a Lab Equipment Quiz. This takes about 20 minutes, including the lab equipment quiz. Here is an online lab equipment quiz.
5. Do a diagnostic math assessment, which takes 15-20 minutes.
The first class has a great deal of orientation and assessment. However, note how many different activities we did. We any luck during class, we can even start the Equipment Measures Lab and start to learn what the equipment actually does. If Tuesday is heavy with instruction, Thursday has hands-on activities. The key is to keep changing the pace and offer loads and loads of activities. My longest lecture all year is Quantum, which is 20 minutes. You could time me. Most overviews are a form of direct instruction and run ten minutes or so. Labs can run longer than 20 minutes; however, because teens are engaged in an activity, their attention spans are longer. Even during labs, I reserve some back-up activity for kiddos who finish early. My chief management technique is to keep kids busy working.
What does your child enjoy? Build unit studies around his or her interest. Add some science! Does your kiddo like to knit, weave, or crochet? Start with wool.
My friend, Jen, is doing a historical unit study about pioneers. With the launch of Little House on the Prairie on Netflix (the original TV series is on Peacock), now is the time to read the Little House series! Jen’s daughter, Sofia, adores her American Girl dolls. Jen’s using the American Girl books in her curriculum. Add Pioneer Games,Pioneer Toy Crafts, Let’s Make Butter! (science experiment), or Bread-making (also science). Make a yarn doll. Jen is adding pioneer clothes, chores, etc to enhance the lesson. Wool lessons dovetail well with History lessons about pioneers. Get inspired to create your own Pioneer Unit, Pioneer Day, or use Oregon Trail Resources or Children of the Pioneers (Learn all about cholera!). Let’s knit a shawl for the doll! Just because you are having so much fun doesn’t mean your kiddos aren’t learning!
You should read this editorial, ‘Why Send a Child to Public School?’ It flips the whole conversation surrounding home-schooling on its head. I see first hand, in Co-op, how home-school students thrive. Please download and save the article! You are going to want to share it with friends and perhaps that critical family member.
Our family lives near Quantico, in Virginia. (Yes, we do hear munition training. If it’s raining, the Marines are training!) You don’t think park when you consider Northern Virginia’s suburbs. You think traffic, which is fair. We schedule everything in terms of time of day and traffic—not miles. But there are many parks in Stafford County. The Co-op meets in parks for planning sessions, back-to-homeschool days, or book exchanges. The parents can talk while the kiddos play. Our little family has visited many of these parks. Here is another opportunity to add a bit of science!
Visiting a park is a form of informal science. Remember that expression for your portfolio! Make notes in your calendar whenever you take your family to the park. Fishing, hiking, wading in the creek are all forms of informal science. Your kiddos are exploring their local environment, learning different species of fish, how fish are stocked locally, how to avoid poison ivy, in addition to creating their own mud kitchen! Hey, this is why you home-school! Just add a 15 minute hike to your afternoon playing at the park.
What’s Your Horsepower? In this lab teens thunder up and down the basement stairs. Boys see every event as a competition. He’s had students meet outside class to compete for the greatest amount of horsepower.
Egg Toss is traditionally performed by hand or with a sheet. Rob gets out cookie sheets; teen toss and catch raw eggs with the cookie sheets. The trick is to slightly drop the sheet as the egg touches the sheet pan. Do this outside.
Laser Jello is another staple. Each time I have to pull the Jello Jiggler recipe and Exploratorium link.
Guess what! You may be asking yourself this question because the teacher who agreed last spring to lead Co-op has vanished. Now you have a gaping hole in the Co-op schedule. All of you were hoping to cover something for Biology or Chemistry. In a moment of weakness you agree to host the class. How hard can it be? Anticipate that you’ll experience moments of terror all year, self-doubt, and defeat. These are all normal. For several years, I was an adjunct at a local college. Talk about imposter syndrome. You may experience it, too. Also normal.
What background do you need to teach a science Co-op class? Is it nice to have a background in science? Sure. Is it necessary? Nope. Are you interested? Your interest is key. I have a science background. It doesn’t prepare me for every question or experiment. I have to do research. I recommend leading a Co-op class with the experiments rather than trying to teach the course—at least the first time. Your job is to try each experiment in advance, prepare the materials, and supervise the lab during Co-op. Students will read, answer questions, and test at home. Trust me; many families will be overjoyed to have you lead labs.
The biggest issue is safety. Buy a set of safety glasses and require students to wear them for every lab. The only exception is if they are doing a microscope lab. Here and here are slide decks with safety and lab equipment links. BTW, it is not plagiarism to use other links, websites, etc for class. Educators have more latitude to use other people’s stuff for class, as long as they don’t try to sell it or pretend it’s their own work.
Ideally the Co-op will meet weekly for 60-90 minutes to complete the experiments. Decide how to fund supplies. Most are inexpensive; however, it’s easier and more practical for you, as the instructor, to bring all the supplies, rather than depend on a parent. Buy a big bin. See if families are willing to invest $25-$50 for each child to defray costs. If you dissect, costs are greater; specimens are pricey.
Before Co-op class, do the experiment. Am I cavalier about this step? Maybe. Have I glanced over the lab and decided I didn’t need to try it? Hmmm. Guess when things go wrong. How long does the experiment take? If an experiment takes 15 minutes, kiddos will need about 30 minutes. Have extra materials on hand. For example, when you introduce the Microscope parts, plan to make slide sketches.. Bring copies of a microscope quiz. Your kiddos are going to read and follow the experiment’s instructions verbatim. Then you can reinforce the lesson. When a teen asks if he could try a different approach or substitute a chemical, the answer is NO! Skip any lab with lye. Period.
Each module has a different number of experiments. Be sure to have materials for three or four experiments from the modules to do during each Co-op session. If you don’t finish all of them, so what? Things go south when you don’t have enough to do. Remember, you may want to have student repeat an experiment; ideally, every experiment is repeated three times. Lengthy experiments, such as calorimetry labs or the DNA Extraction are usually performed once, because they take so much time. I do allow variations with the DNA lab. Try different soaps: liquid, hand soap, laundry detergent, Dawn, or shampoo. I bring extra materials to allow students who finish early to try it again.
What happens when something in lab goes wrong? Try Apologia’ Support page. For example, click on Chemistry, and review the articles with questions and answers. Look at What help do you have for Calorimetry problems? Apologia has a sample lab report and Lab Report Guide. (BTW, one zinger in Apologia’s Chemistry textbook is Experiment 5.1 (2e) or Experiment 7.1 (3e). Here are sample calculations.) Okay, what happens when the lab didn’t work at all. First, panic! Just kidding! Reread the lab. Did the kids miss a step? Repeat the lab. If it still doesn’t work, shrug it off. There are many reasons a lab doesn’t work. For example, I learned the hard way to use fresh meat tenderizer to do the DNA Extraction lab. The enzyme breaks down pretty quickly. What did I I do? I brought a fresh jar and we redid the experiment during the next class. We were all expert at the DNA extraction lab because we had trouble-shot every other variable before arriving on the meat tenderizer. You are going to make mistakes. Things are going to go wrong. Labs are going to fail. None of these events portend the end of the world. Although it helps to have a robust self concept.
Where can you go for more help? There are loads of free YouTube videos, such as Apologia’s Chemistry 3.2 (2e) below. No, getting help is not cheating! It’s fine to Google a question on your cell phone, too. Yes, during class! Crash Course is fantastic! You might want to broadcast a video related to the topic, such as fermentation after doing the experiment. Yes, watching a video is part of teaching!
Take one more step. Look up the key concept. For example, if you are doing Experiment 4.2, be sure to do a little research before class. What is fermentation? What is methylene blue? What is an indicator?(Methylene blue, crystal violet, phenol red, etc are indicator solutions, dyes which change color at different pH levels. Think dye lots in fabric or yarn. If the dye solution is slightly more acidic or basic, the color changes. That’s why many dyes make interesting inductor solutions.) What is the point to the experiment? You’ll feel much more confident leading the experiment with the class.
What can you do if the experiments are done is 15 minutes and Co-op lasts 90 minutes? First, teens can answer ‘On Your Own’ or study guide questions from the textbook. (They need their textbooks anyway to do the experiments.) Define the terms in bold from the textbook or outline the module. In Chemistry, print Chemmatters articles and questions from the teacher’s guides. Watch a Crash Course video. In Biology, you may be comfortable doing a related activity, such as Creating a Food Web or doing an extra Dichotomous Key (Here is the answer key. Do activities with answer keys! Let the kiddos check their answers and make corrections.) Keep emergency word search puzzles or cryptograms. Try a project. Make a cell model. Assemble a Mitosis Flip Book. Adopt an Element. Look at you growing in confidence!
As you grow in confidence, stretch a little. Add a few labs: Gummy Bear Osmosis, Jelly Bean Biology, or Reaction in a Bag. Food related labs build confidence: Bread in a Bag or Candy DNA. One key tip is to have the answer keys and Apologia Solutions’ guide with answers. Learn as you go! Teaching is hard work. It is also enormously rewarding. Be honest with your kiddos if you don’t have a science background. Explain you all will learn together. Buckle up and buy a set of safety glasses!
In another life I taught in both private and public schools. I have some experience with misbehavior and how to address it. I want to teach—not correct student behavior. What works? First, in any science classroom safety is paramount. Any safety violation is addressed immediately. Students who remove safety glasses during lab clean everyone’s lab stations. If I catch two kiddos, both clean. Usually, a few sessions cleaning lab equipment nips the problem of wearing safety classes in the bud. This has worked in private, public and Co-op settings.
There are always a few students who misbehave. Step one is to move the teen or change partners. Generally, I move the student next to me. In fact, I make sure to keep an especially close eye on the student indefinitely. What happens if he or she continues to annoy the class, pull stupid stunts, etc? Next is the cleaning chart. There is always a list of chores: sharpen pencils, vacuum, sort kits, wipe stairs, etc. (I have three bathrooms which are fair game, too.) Usually, Rob and I assign 15 minutes of chores for each offense, such as dangling the dissected frog in one’s neighbor’s face. We issue a warning. If the behavior continues, the kid cleans. Kids can spend an afternoon sorting material on the shelves in the basement at their mom’s convenience.
Once in a while, there is a kid who just won’t stop doing annoying things. Then we talk to his or her family. Next the child remains after class to scrub the basement floor and the steps—after vacuuming the rugs. If there is more misbehavior, I encourage mom to take away all of his devices and tech privileges for a week. The next time the same kid misbehaves, I explain that the next recommendation to mom is a month without any tech. I also explain to the child that mom is key strokes or a phone call away.
Be sure to explain tiered consequences for misbehavior. We keep a list of unpleasant chores posted. Last year, we issued only one 15-minute penalty. The kids know we are serious.
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One of the Co-op family uses Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool (EP) for her kiddos. When I was finishing her portfolio review, I noticed the website offers high school subjects, including Chemistry with Lab. I get it. Families want a solution to tough classes, especially when they aren’t confident teaching the subject. After all, I teach Chem. How is the EP course? Overall, it’s not bad; I just think Apologia is better.
The course is based in Georgia’s Virtual Chemistry. (GVC) The EP does supplement the GVC course with a number of articles, videos, etc. EP’s Chemistry course has a daily syllabus; the printouts constitute the study guide. EP is more of a survey course; there is a link for a free CLEP Prep site.
Apologia’s Chem textbook has the labs and study guide questions. If you buy the textbook and tests and solutions manual, you have the entire course. The tests and solutions manual have answers to the study guide questions in the textbook, as well as the tests and answer keys. Apologia inserts the daily syllabus into the student notebooks. Many families do NOT buy student notebooks. Here is a schedule. There are 16 modules; a typical course runs 32 weeks, which results in one module every two weeks.
EP uses videos, articles, tutorials, simulations, etc in place of a textbook. The course is largely bas3d on reading or watching videos and taking notes. I am biased toward using a textbook and doing loads and loads of labs. Some of the GVC material, such as The Electrons in Atoms Lesson or Stoichiometric Calculations have series of instructional videos. Your teen might follow the EP daily lessons with videos, articles, etc and use the GVC series as another source whenever material is confusing. (EP references Khan Academy, another excellent resource.)
The price for EP Chemistry is right: 180 free lessons. If your family plans to use EP, be sure to follow the Georgia Virtual Chemistry course, too. Keep in mind, used copies of Apologia’s textbook are not expensive. Chem labs are designed for home-school families. Here is the lab equipment; the labs use household materials and chemicals.
I can understand why a family would choose EP Chem. The course is laid out in 180 lessons. All of the videos are one click away. Their study questions are straightforward. There are a limited number of messy labs. It’s free! I remain committed to using a textbook and doing as many labs as possible. I’m growing more and more concerned about children and screen time. Although many teens need to watch a video and read material to understand a complex topic. Fine. I think EP is an adequate, survey course; Apologia’s Chem course is far better. However, there is no reason you shouldn’t book mark both EP and GVC in case you want to try any of their labs, videos, simulations, or articles.
Take a deep breath. Yes, it’s now October. No, you haven’t done any of the labs in the Apologia textbook. (Yes, as a matter of fact I am clairvoyant!) No, you aren’t a failure. Before you give up and list the unused kit on Facebook, take a minute. It’s October, not May. September can be a lot. Your family got back on a schedule. Some of the kiddos adjust more quickly than others. You may be on the struggle bus all month trying to get math started after breakfast. You might feel as though you are juggling fifty things. Stop beating yourself up because it took a month to get adjusted to the fall schedule. Instead, set aside one hour on Fridays. Start with the first lab or two. Stop when one hour is up. Really. The labs aren’t going anywhere. Repeat next week. Does it really matter that you’re behind on experiments? I don’t think so. Tell your kiddos it’s a review. Just what do they remember from Module #1? This is going to be the best year yet!
I like to add a few TI 83/84 graphing calculator (and spreadsheet) activities to my Co-op Chemistry class. Okay, these labs are usually performed with wet labs. However, the data sets are usually better than real data collected—especially when you want to introduce a concept. Students are more apt to repeat a lab when their data varies greatly from sample data—another plus! I’m always a little anxious about preparing my Co-op classes for college—especially STEM students. Be brave! Add a little graphing!
1. The first lesson is about how graph a set of data. It helps to practice with several data sets. Density can be graphed. This exercise has sample, density data for galena. Here are several data sets to graph. Below is a quick overview about graphing, followed by two videos I made about how to graph a linear regression. The TI 83 and TI 84 function similarly. This Density Lab with glass marbles would be a great lab to graph. I’m ordering 50 marbles so we can add this lab to my density series in Module 1 Lesson.
2. This Heating Curve Analysis has a good data set. My classes learn how to enter data into the STAT function, create a scatter plot, and do a linear regression, a math model. You can graph the data from this lab and do the lab to compare data. Kiddos are taking ice and boiling it; as they work, they collect the temperature and graph it. (Yes, this is exactly like watching paint dry.) Here is more sample data and a graph of the phase changes.
3. Boyle’s Law and Charles’ Law (has sample data) Gas Law labs are also good graphing calculator exercises. Teens can graph the data sets. My class enters the data into STAT, creates a scatter plot, and finally does a regression (shown in video at top). Here is another data set. Now do both the Boyle’s Law Lab and the Charles’ Law lab. Collect the data, graph it, and compare to the sample data. At this point, the kiddos should be able to explain what the relationships are among Boyle’s and Charles’ laws.
