Labs are some of my favorite learning activities to do with students. I try to do as many labs during the year as I can, and they are an important part of my science instruction. Labs are fun to do, but it’s really important to educate students and practice safe lab behavior. Chemicals and glassware can be extremely dangerous.
Accidents happen, even with proper safety awareness. Luckily, no one has been seriously injured in my classroom. But it takes constant forethought and monitoring. No horseplay is the number one rule. This is when students get hurt.
I’m glad to say that I have been more injured over the years than my students. One year I sliced my finger open on a broken test tube prepping the lab, Hail in a Test Tube. The most common accident is broken glassware, so have a broom and dust pan ready, as well as a sharps container.
Continue reading for more ideas on how to teach Lab Safety:
- Lab Safety station lab
- Draw a diagram of the safety equipment in the classroom
- Flinn Scientific Safety Contract
- Lab Safety Teacher Script
- Lab Safety review: group practice quiz
- Lab Safety review: Quizizz or Kahoot!
- Flinn Scientific Lab Safety quiz
- Resources in Google Drive to teach Lab Safety
Lab Safety Station Lab
My favorite way to introduce Lab Safety at the beginning of the year is with this Kesler Lab Safety Station Lab by Kesler Science. You can find it on Teachers Pay Teachers. Back when I used more Kesler Science stuff, I loved all the extra questions and activity ideas. I often used them as extension activities.
In general I really like doing station labs. The idea is students explore a topic by accomplishing various tasks around the room. (5E)
It’s perfect for tired high schoolers and squirmy middle schoolers because it gets them on their feet and moving.
It takes some time to prepare this lesson upfront because of printing and laminating, but then it’s ready to reuse year after year. My first 2 years teaching I used a lot of Kesler Science stuff. It saved me a lot of planning time and gave me a big pool of questions and activity ideas to pull from.
Make a Diagram of the Safety Equipment in the Classroom
This is a great lab safety activity, and it is actually one of the tasks in the Kesler Station Lab I mentioned. When I setup my classroom at the beginning of the year, I use signs to label all the safety equipment in the classroom. This helps students identify the equipment and label their diagrams.
On a piece of blank paper, students make a diagram of the safety equipment in the classroom. They illustrate the important safety equipment in relation to the set-up of the classroom (the desks, door, teacher desk, sinks, etc).
I provide a list of the equipment, and students create a map of the classroom with colored symbols to represent each safety item and a labeled key:
- First Aid Kit
- Phone
- Chemical Shower
- Eyewash Station
- Sharps Container
- Safety Goggles
- Trashcan
- Sinks
- Fire Extinguisher
- Fire Blanket
- Chemical Storage
- Evacuation Map
To review, it’s fun to ask the class where each one of these items are and have them all point to it at once. Where is the…fire extinguisher? Everybody points.
As we go through each one, I like to explain when or how each item should be used. If I have an interesting anecdote, I’ll share that, too.
Like one year students were goofing around in the classroom next door. They bumped into the fire extinguisher and it fell off the wall and went off. Literally every single surface of the classroom was covered in foam. The particles activated the fire alarm and the whole school was evacuated. They also had to call a special service to come and clean it. That’s why the number one rule in lab safety is: No Horseplay.
Another year on the last day of school, a student pulled the chemical shower in the room next door, “for fun.” The entire classroom floor filled with an inch of gray, foamy water, and everything on the floor got soaked. It was a lot of clean up. I guarantee when you go over it, someone will ask what would happen if they use the chemical shower or eyewash station in a non emergency. You can tell them that the student started the next year school year suspended for the entire first week of school!
Flinn Scientific Safety Contract
This is a really straight forward way to review Lab Safety, and I find it works well with my high school students. Check out my Teacher Script for Lab Safety that goes over the contract. First, we go over the Flinn Scientific Student Safety Contract. I have the contract under the document camera and students annotate their copy.
Basically, I go over the most common mistakes and ways to stay safe in the lab. Numbers 1-10 are like common sense, and I tell students that they will be tested on these. Other important rules are numbers 11, 14, 23, 25, 27, 29, 33 and 45.
I do something a little different each year:
- One year, students had to choose one rule from the Flinn Lab Safety Contract and illustrate it on a piece of paper. They presented to the class to review for the upcoming Lab Safety Quiz.
- Another year we played Charades! I assigned teams of students a rule from the contract to act out. The rest of the class had to guess which rule they were portraying. We made it a friendly competition by keeping score. The winning group got prizes, and other leading teams got raffle tickets!
Students must sign the contract and have it reviewed and signed by a Parent/Guardian in order to participate in any labs. It’s great if you can go over the Safety Contract in the first few days or the first week of school. Students will be taking lots of papers home during this time to get signed and you can add it to the bunch.
Lab Safety Teacher Script
One way I lesson plan is by writing a Teacher Script. I prepare questions, examples, and explanations to help me engage my students. My scripts help me be concise and stay focused through all of the distractions. It is one of my top classroom management strategies.
My Lab Safety Teacher Script encompasses many of my teacher-centered moments when learning Lab Safety. Just print the script, attach it to a clipboard, and you’re ready to go! Check out my blog post Lab Safety Teacher Script to read more.
Lab Safety Review: Group Practice Quiz
I love getting students into groups to work together. I love it so much that I have a whole classroom routine around it: Group Roles. Check out my blog posts How to Teach Group Roles. Also check out my post Effective Classroom Management: Harnessing the Power of Group Roles to read more about this important classroom routine.
In groups of 4, students take the Flinn Scientific Lab Safety Quiz together. Student desks are already arranged in groups of 4, so that’s their team. This is a great opportunity to introduce and practice Group Roles, which we utilize regularly when doing labs and group work.
Each team chooses a Captain, Recorder, Organizer, and Timekeeper (or I assign them by their desks labeled A, B, C, D).
- The Captain‘s job is to make sure the whole team agrees on the answer, before the Recorder can write down the team’s answer.
- The Organizer is in charge of getting any supplies their group needs, and turning in the test.
- The Timekeeper‘s job is to keep everyone on task and give regular updates on the time remaining so they finish on time.
Work together, and if everyone in the group passes the Quiz they will get Bonus Points! Bonus points are not an exact science, but it is a conscious choice I make and part of my classroom management. One of my strategies at the beginning of every quarter is to help students maintain an A or a B, at least for a little while. I notice that it is incredibly motivating for students to start the year as a success, and then try to maintain it.
Having an F within the first 2 weeks of the school year or quarter is totally demoralizing for students. The ones who are likely to check out and not care will do it from the beginning of the year without little boosts like this and opportunities to improve.
At the end of the day, their grade reflects their effort, knowledge, and understanding. Bonus Points won’t makeup for lack of work in the long run, so I don’t see the harm in providing a little extrinsic motivation to get things going on the right foot.
Lab Safety Review: Quizizz or Kahoot!
Play my Lab Safety Quizizz, or Kahoot. Reward students with raffle tickets or prizes. I guarantee they will love it!
Quizizz and Kahoot! aren’t as original as the other lesson ideas in this post. But I have to include them because my students just love to play games like these.
Most of my students are familiar with Kahoot, but I prefer Quizizz. What I like about it is students read the questions off of their own devices (instead of the projector screen) and answer the questions at their own pace. They receive feedback on incorrect answers and a summary of their game at the end so they can learn from their mistakes.
Another review idea is to have students create the Kahoots. 10 questions: multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank, along with all of the correct and incorrect answer choices. Each question must have a related image. You can create a playlist of the Kahoots they make and we can play them back to back (no wasted time logging in after every round).
Flinn Scientific Lab Safety Quiz
When I taught high school Biology, our school required that our students passed the Flinn Scientific Lab Safety Test. It is 35 questions long. Lots of the questions are common sense, and it is multiple choice.
I spend at least a block period or two on Lab Safety before we take the actual Flinn Scientific Lab Safety Test.
Students must achieve a 75% or higher in order to demonstrate adequate understanding of Lab Safety and to participate in labs. If their score is below 75%, I will speak with them individually about when they can re-take it.
As an incentive, I make the safety quiz an actual test score. If they get 75% or above, they get a 100% recorded as their first test score. I do this for a few reasons. It is extra motivation for students to prepare and do well on the quiz. It’s a little boost in the grade book at the beginning of the year, and I found that it encourages students to continue working hard and keep their grade up. It improves their test score average and students love opportunities like this.
If you don’t want to administer a hardcopy of the quiz, students can answer the same questions of the Flinn Lab Safety Quiz with this Quizizz.
Resources in Google Drive to teach Lab Safety
Check out my Lab Safety folder in Google Drive. Make a copy of my Teacher Script, and tweak it to your needs.
Google Drive > How She Teaches > Lab Safety
Accidents Still Happen
Labs are engaging and exciting. They are memorable experiences for me and for my students. Yes, they can be dangerous. I wouldn’t leave a lab as my sub plan for a substitute teacher. But with thorough safety instruction and review, I can do labs the entire year with peace of mind and confidence.
I can be so vigilant, and accidents still happen. Most often, it’s broken glassware and no one gets hurt.
Even if I go over Lab Safety thoroughly at the beginning of the year, I can’t expect students to know everything moving forward. With every single lab we do, I think about and go over the safety parameters specific to the equipment or chemicals in that lab. For instance in the lab, A Model of the Rock Cycle with Crayons, we use a votive candle to melt the crayon wax. I remind students about Fire safety – goggles, hair tied up, loose clothing tucked in. And when they are done with the lab, they clean up their station and work from their seat. They may not walk around the classroom!
Along with classroom rules and first day of school activities, Lab Safety is one of the first topics I cover at the beginning of the year. Don’t forget to check out my Teacher Script for Lab Safety for more inspiration!
How do you teach lab safety in your classroom? Do you have stories of times when things went wrong (or right)? Let me know by leaving a comment. I would love to hear from you!
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