Science Lab Coats Getting to Know You Activity

Lab Coats Pigment a Thousand Words

It started many years ago.  I was teaching in a pocket-size rural unproblematic school in Kentucky. I had worked difficult to establish an outdoor classroom on our school grounds and a science lab in our building.  Back and so, both of those were rare in an elementary school setting. To help students feel like scientists at piece of work, I came upwards with the idea of wearing lab coats.

I painted my offset lab coat and wore it into the lab.  My students were enthralled.  Information technology wasn't long earlier each brought in Dad's over-sized shirts and began painting their learning on them using fabric paints. We wore our lab coats outside the classroom, through the building, and back from lunch. Along the manner, everyone stopped my students to enquire them near their lab coats. As they discussed their work, I realized they were really giving other students and teachers a quick review of the science content I had hoped they had learned. The lab coats became a powerful visual tool for our science program.

Modeling Best Practices

I retired from teaching more than ten years agone and went to work at the Heart for Integrative Natural Scientific discipline and Mathematics at our local university, Northern Kentucky Academy. I now model best practices in science teaching for K-8th form teachers, while simultaneously working with their students.

If I am modeling best practices, how could I non include Project Learning Tree? The idea of teaching students "how to recollect, not what to think" is at the heart of our work.  This is when the use of the lab coats began to more extensively take shape.  I started painting lab coats for every concept I was education. Many of them relate to specific PLT activities.

The 5 East's

During this time, I began reading about the five "E" model for inquiry. Each E in the model stands for a give-and-take that leads students through the research process. They are Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Eastvaluate.

The lab coats engage students in the learning that was well-nigh to have identify. Students but have to await at my lab glaze and they know what we will be upward to that twenty-four hours. Oftentimes, during the "teachable moments" students will use my lab coat as a walking bulletin board, to explain major concepts. It really helps when nosotros are down a trail or at a pond to employ the visuals on the glaze.

It wasn't long before the students stopped calling me Mrs.  Hart and began referring to me as Ms. Frizzle , the eccentric schoolteacher that takes her grade on wondrous educational field trips with the help of her very own "magic school bus"!

Spreading the Idea

The lab coats have really caught on. I accept at present painted nearly 25 different lab coats. Information technology has go my signature. I practise not walk into a school or begin a workshop without wearing one.

Every bit part of my task, I piece of work with pre-service teachers and facilitate professional person development opportunities for them. All of the participants want to make their own lab coats. I can't tell you how many requests for lab coat painting parties I have had by pre-service teachers.

I as well help lead trainings for other educators interested in becoming PLT workshop facilitators. These facilitator trainings are oft held over a couple of days at remote facilities in our cute parks and lodges. I oftentimes bring along lab coats for painting in the evening. Imagine the discussions that proceed as participants relax and get-go painting. At the end of the workshop, we have a red carpet walk for participants to model and discuss their lab coat as a way to share their learning from the workshop. It is a powerful closing.

When I was packing for Lake Tahoe to nourish PLT'southward annual conference, I was considering what to habiliment to take the Project Learning Tree National Outstanding Educator Accolade at a special tiffin.  Information technology didn't take me long to decide that I had to come up as myself and accept the award in one of my lab coats.  Information technology is who I am and what I do.

• Bio

Reeda Hart

Reeda Hart is a old uncomplicated school teacher and now science outreach specialist for the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights. She was named a Project Learning Tree National Outstanding Educator in 2010.

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Source: https://www.plt.org/educator-tips/lab-coats-paint-a-thousand-words