Lab Book and Reports

Last Monday was our second day of co-op.  My job there is to teach seven students Apologia Physical Science.  So far I enjoy teaching this subject.   We meet each Monday for one and half hours. 

I had the students prepare their science notebook, read part of the first module, and do one lab before the first day of school.   I noticed from their lab reports they did not know how to write up a proper lab.  Even though, I gave them a form from DonnaYoung.org to fill out.  I should have made this a priority the first day.  Next year I will know better.

I did some research and found a cute poster with The Scientific Method on it.  I am not having the students write a formal lab book this year, but they do need to know how it is done. 

First they need a good Composition book.  It should be college ruled and sewn.  There are several reasons why your students should use a composition book and why they should write labs.  Here is a good article on that subject.

Lab Book Set Up

The first page of any Lab Book should have your Name, Address, Phone Number, Class, and Year.  This is just in case you loose your science book and honest people will know where to return it. 

The second page and a few pages more, is your Table of Content.  This is where you will write the title of your lab and the page number. 

Next comes the lab pages.  They all should be numbered.

Lab Write-up:

A write-up should contain:

• Name:  First and last
• Date
• Experiment # and Title
• Materials
• Method/Procedure
• Results
• Drawings/charts
• Conclusion/What you have learned

You can find lab sheets, to fill out, at  Donna Young.org.

Scientific Methog:

The Scientific Method – Is written steps used by sciencetist to prove or disprove their work. The formal lab-write up is as follows:

1.  Purpose:  What do you want to learn?  Why are you doing this lab?

2.  Research - Learn everything you can about the subject.

3.  Hypothesis – predict what is going to happen.  The Hypothesis is written in a complete sentence.  It is given in an If….then type sentance.  Ex.  If I touch an open flame, then I will get burned.  Don’t try this experiment.

4.  Experiment – Procedure,  what did you do?  Observe what is happening

5.  Analysis/Results -  Collect any data you observed from the experiment.

6.  Conclusion -  written on a second sheet.  What did you learn? 

For more information on how to write a lab report go to here  .

We are unable to use the composition books in our class, because the students do some of the labs in class and some at home.  I can’t keep the books, while they are doing labs at home.  Instead, I bought each of the students a folder.  We placed the first page, Table of Contents and copies of lab forms from Donna Youngs site in there.   The students hand in their write-ups and put them in the lab folder, when they are graded and returned.