Updated Lab List

A lot of discussion on one of my listservs about lab minutes. The regents curriculum requires 1200 minutes of lab before students are allowed to sit for the exam, but what exactly constitutes 1200 minutes is not entirely clear. It seem to be pretty much up to the teacher to determine what labs to do (aside from the 4 required labs) and how many minutes to assign to the lab.

I personally assign a certain number of minutes to each lab, based on what I think is a reasonable amount of time for my students. I fully expect to go pretty far beyond the minimum requirement anyway, so I try not to get too caught up in it. This excess also reduces the need for make-ups, which I find logistically impossible anyway - if a student is absent for a lab, they just miss the lab.

So here is a list again of labs I have done or expect to do before the exam. I will work on linking to any worksheets I have in the next few days. Most of these are "homemade" labs and don't require sophisticated materials/equipment:

#__________Name_________________Minutes

1. Peanuts Observation.....................60

2. Mental Models/Black Box...........120

3. Mendel’s Pea Plant Simulation....45

4. Alien Genetics..............................90

5. Mitosis/Pipe-cleaners..................90

6. Egg Osmosis...................................90

7. Finches’ Beaks (NY State)...........90

8. Microscope review/skills.............60

9. Pasta DNA models........................120

10. Digestive system models...........90

11. Hot Salsa Lab...............................90

12. Mello Jello Lab.............................90

13. Sheep Heart Dissection..............90

14. Vital Signs (GK-12).....................90

15. Exit Projects.................................120

16. Making Connections (NYState)...90

17. Diffusion/Osmosis (NY State)...180

18. Biodiversity (NY State)..............180

19. Frog Dissection............................120

20. Flower Dissection/Seed/Plants..90

21. Respiration/Photosynthesis........90

Total Minutes........................2085

UPDATE

The last three are, sadly, off the list. Prom and graduation rehearsal killed them. That's one of the disadvantages of teaching regents in middle school grade 8. That makes about 1785 minutes.