Ed Tech 4 Science

We all want to avoid having children get hurt doing school science. We also don’t want teachers to avoid doing hands-on science because of fears related to safety issues in the science classroom. For the elementary school classroom there are a couple of valuable resources that can help teachers and administrators develop safer practices for science instruction.

These are:

Science and Safety: It’s Elementary (http://www.csss-science.org/downloads/scisaf_cal.pdf)

And

Safety in the Elementary (K-6) Science Classroom (http://membership.acs.org/c/ccs/pubs/K-6_art_2.pdf)

Many of these practices have been written with common sense in mind. And if you are safety minded, you are on the lookout for all the potential things that can go wrong and ways to prevent these accidents. Unfortunately, K-5 classrooms would not have some of this safety equipment, such as eyewash fountains, fume hoods, and safety showers, and probably most middle school science classrooms would come up short in these areas.

While going all virtual to avoid safety problems may be tempting, a more pragmatic solution is to avoid dangerous hands-on materials and be very careful to try science activities before hand, and monitor student behavior.

Technology For K-6 Science Safety

While technology is often thought of as electronic stuff, a better and wider view is that it is any human made products that make our lives better or safer. With this in mind, I present my top ten safety technologies.

1. Teacher Developed Safety Rules Contract: A teacher and students who are safety minded is probably the best defense against accidents. There should be no toleration of inappropriate behavior when doing hands-on science.

2. Goggles: Chemical splash safety goggles should be worn whenever what you are working with has the potential to hurt or damage eyes. Please don’t adopt the view, such as, “I use ammonia at home without goggles, so it is okay to use it in school without goggles.” An adult can decide not to use goggles at home and it is at their peril. If a teacher decides not to have students wear goggles with materials that could harm eyes, and eyes are damaged, the teacher will probably be held culpable, as will the administrators, the school, and the district.

3. Disposable Nitrile Gloves: From dissections to handling chemicals, these can prevent problems. And if a student is bleeding for any reason, an adult should put on gloves to help with the situation.

4. Locked Chemical Cabinet

5. Fire blanket and extinguisher

6. First aid kit

7. Proper waste containers

8. Rubber covered muslin aprons

9. Safety posters and signs

10. Non-mercury thermometers

Teachers should be urged to provide hands-on experiences for their students. But teachers are also responsible for the safety of their students.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under All Grade Levels, Classroom Best Practices, Earth Science, Elementary School Science, Instructional Leadership, Middle School Science, Science Activities, Science Experiments, Science Teachers, biology, chemistry, physics, science education, science instruction, teacher education.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.