I love chemistry!!

Or should I say I love watching students doing chemistry and having fun while doing it.  This week my Year 10 start is student driven topic looking at acid bases and salts. I first saw this in action at Rangitoto College and it worked really well with the students their and worked really well last year at my current school. The way I run the lessons is very simple the 4 periods a week we have in the lab are wet, that students are doing the experiments, getting there hands dirty doing chemistry. The one lesson a week when we are not in the lab is theory or the learning outcome for this topic that is dry - looking at the effect acid has on the environment. This lesson is going to be ICT based and will focus on group research to complement the notes I have given them.
The way I run the wet labs is very simple, the students come in sit down and I give them a brief - 5-10 minutes max run down of what I expect to be achieved in that lesson, I may go over some concepts on the board if specifically ask and then I let the students loose. I have very strict rules in my lab and they were put in place on day 1 and my students are very comfortable with the expectation and consequences.  The students for the most part work in groups of there own choosing, this is novel for them as the rest of they were assigned. They are pretty good at it they have worked out who they work well with  and who they don't. I have yet to have to step in (except with my new internationals) and change groups. As long as they stick to the size limit and don't do anything silly I leave them to it.
Today was the first full day of lab work and both classes had a double period. The amount of work one of the classes got through was amazing, they were working really hard and getting through all the experiments, asking question of each other and me, answering their own questions when asking me to give them the answers (it doesn't work that way any more).  The other class was the stark contrast, they are admittedly a slightly less able class and there work ethic and and self reliance is lower and they are more needy. I have a rule, one of my golden 5 that only only explain things twice, 3 at a stretch. This class really tested my patience today, especially after coming from the other class this morning and they are self starters and motivators (for the most part). One of the experiments I covered in the intro and briefing, what need to be achieved, what was in their group trays etc. I then set them to work. 2 groups got started right away, they were happy with what they were doing. I asked the class as a whole before went to the benches of they understood, no comment. sweet I though to myself, this should be as easy as this morning, no hassles students happily working way. How wrong was I, about 5 minutes later I had to stop the entire class and explain 2 experiments again. This time with a fine tooth comb, they couldn't or wouldn't stop to figure it out for themselves. I had already directed 3 groups this way and they kept asking. So to save my sanity I stopped them, the explained it bit by bit on the board, purely to save my own sanity. It wasn't rocket science, all they were doing was test 5 indicators to see what happened when a few drops of an acid or a base was place on them. they were then to use those results to identify 4 unknown solutions. As a class we wrote the method for that second part of the experiment at the beginning of the lesson so in my mind and previous experience it was a very straight forward task.  Anyway once we got over that irritating hurdle the rest of the double went well, that figured out I wasn't going to give them the answers of do the experiments for them. I was answering questions with questions and occasionally answers and supervising the use of 2mol H2SO4.

It will be very interesting to compare the progress of both class on Monday, I have my suspicions that one will be much further ahead of the other. Oh well, just gives me an excuse to watch Cosmos.
In saying all of this the main aim of science is for the students to have fun while they learning and they were so I am a happy science teacher!!!