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Carrie, Chris and Amna –

Chromatography We met in the retail center

Chris could only see the video, and Amna and Carrie could see only a white screen

Eileen came by and tried to help out

We decided to watch the video individually and meet back in SL to discuss.

What Scaffolding( presenting a framework for understanding) does the teacher do to present the chromatography?

Teacher explained capillary action to the

students

Indicated that capillary action is how blood travels up a tube.

Mentioned that the pores in the

chromatography paper will help water travel

up.

What additional questions might you ask to ensure that students are understanding the process?

Why do you think that chromatography is used in crime investigations?

What factors do you think cause different ink colors to separate at different heights?

What are some possible errors that can occur and impact our results?

What suggestions might you make to the teacher to get more participation from the students?

The teacher could have asked more questions of the students to get them involved.

Each student could have a specific role in the lab, as some students seemed to just be watching others.

The lab could have been tied in to better or explained in the context of the crime scene investigation, to give it more meaning and relevance to the theme.

The teacher could ask probing questions to get students to think about factors that could impact accuracy of experiment.

At the start of the experiment the teacher could have asked

some questions about capillary action and given some more “real life” examples( paper towels, trees). He could also talk about why larger pores make a difference.

Capillary action could be introduced even before the lab, so the students can understand that before they start thinking about the lab.

Observations/Comments We noticed that in the videos, there was more

than one teacher for the class, which gave the teacher some extra help in walking around and giving each groups some time. We can not expect to always have this in our classrooms.

We noticed that in a few videos students were not as engaged as they would be if roles/tasks were assigned.

At times the chromatography video we discussed felt somewhat like a “cookbook” lab because students were told what to do instead of being involved in thinking about the next steps.

It could be beneficial to upload this video to youtube.