Lesson: Writing A Procedure

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Unit T5

Exploring a Hypothesis

Reaction Times in Sports

Constructing a Hypothesis

Writing a Procedure

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Lesson: Writing a Procedure

Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

This lesson offers practice at writing a procedure for an experiment or other lab activity. It also addresses some of the problems that can occur if procedures are not explicit enough.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students practice writing a procedure.

Students evaluate a procedure to determine if it is explicit enough for a science experiment.

Students use a checklist for a good procedure.

Teacher Tip

You can bring bread and peanut butter to class and ask the students for explicit directions on how to make a peanut butter sandwich. You may likely get responses that will mimic the cartoon below. Be sure to do exactly what the students tell you to do. This will show them that they need to be very detailed and explicit.

Teaching Notes

ACTIVITY OVERVIEW

Discuss cartoon (10 minutes)
Practice writing a procedure (20 minutes)
Evaluate Maria's procedure writing (15 minutes)

Discuss cartoon (10 minutes)

The cartoon demonstrates what can go wrong when a procedure is imprecise.

Ask:

What went wrong?

Practice writing a procedure (20 minutes)

Have students write a more precise procedure for making a peanut butter sandwich.

Share some of the elements of an explicit procedure, including detailed directions for each step so that nothing should go wrong. Students may want to know how specific to be. For example, is their user someone who is not at all familiar with the concept of a sandwich and has never seen a loaf of bread or a jar of peanut butter? You may want to tell your students to design the procedure for someone who is familiar with all of the ingredients but has never seen a sandwich.

Evaluate Maria's procedure writing (15 minutes)

Tell students that in the peanut butter sandwich activity, they practiced thinking about all the steps necessary to successfully complete a task; however, precision is not completely necessary when making a peanut butter sandwich.

Paraphrase:

When we design a procedure for science, we need to include:

detailed directions for each step
the number of times the procedure needs to be repeated
how to record the data
units of measurement that are explicit

Students evaluate Maria’s procedure for the four criteria. Engage students in a discussion about Maria’s procedure.

Sample responses:

Maria gives detailed directions for each step.
She did not include the number of times that she is going to repeat the procedure.
She does not say how much salt should be placed on the ice cube.
She is careful to include labeling in her procedure.