Summary
Honors chemistry students are given a set of 10 unknown chemicals that they must identify using techniques that they have already used in the current year. Absolutely NO procedure is given. Each day, lab groups will come up with a procedure, equipment list and necessary chemicals list for the next class.
A pair of AP chemistry students is partnered with each honors lab group. The AP students receive the procedure and lists of necessary supplies and are responsible for highlighting possible problems with the procedure as well as mixing the required chemicals and getting together all of the requested equipment.
The culmination of this activity is a presentation in which the honors student groups must share their findings with a panel of experts from industry and nearby universities, their peers, and an assortment of non-science faculty members. Following their presentations, the students must then answer questions from the panel regarding their techniques and results.
TIPC Ratings
With little to no guidance from the teacher, students must research and then come up with their own procedures based on the information they gather.
Teacher determines groups and sets up GoogleDoc to allow sharing of information between students in different classes. (*Though the GoogleDoc was meant to be used an electronic lab notebook – checked once a day – many groups created their own blogs or G-chats to communicate with their AP helpers in a more interactive way!)
Students must come up with their own procedure with minimal guidance (the AP students/teacher will only step in if safety is a concern). Based on their results, they have to reflect and perhaps make changes to their procedures for the rest of the activity.
Students must come up with their own procedure (there are multiple ways of identifying many of these chemicals) as well as their own means of communicating their results to the panel (PowerPoint, flipchart, mixed media video, infographic, etc). The expert, peer and self-evaluations gave a tremendous amount of feedback so that students could reflect on the experience and make changes moving forward.
